Preamble

The House met at Half past Two o'Clock

PRAYERS

[MR. SPEAKER in the Chair]

PRIVATE BUSINESS

DUNDEE CORPORATION (WATER TRANSPORT FINANCE &C.) ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL

FORTH ROAD BRIDGE ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL

GLASGOW CORPORATION ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL

Considered; to be read the Third time tomorrow.

Oral Answers to Questions — EMPLOYMENT

Factory Inspectors (Qualifications)

Dr. Stross: asked the Minister of Labour how many of the factory inspectors in the entry grade have science qualifications; and how many are arts graduates.

The Minister of Labour and National Service (Sir Walter Monckton): Of the 83 factory inspectors in the entry grade, seven have science qualifications and 61 are arts graduates. Two inspectors have engineering qualifications and 13 have considerable works experience.

Dr. Stross: Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman remember that there was a different picture in this connection before the war, when most of the people in the entry grade had technical and scientific qualifications? It he aware that the change may be due, in part at least, to the fact that such graduates are now taken over by other Ministries which are able to offer higher financial incentives? Will the Minister do something about this?

Sir W. Monckton: The answer to the last part—which is perhaps the most

important part of the hon. Member's question—is that a claim for an increase in the salaries of the chief inspector, deputy chief inspectors and superintending inspectors is at present under consideration.

Dr. Stross: Is the Minister aware that we are all very happy to hear that, not because we have any interest in any particular person but because if the grades are lifted in this way for the chiefs it means that the whole status of the service is raised as well?

Workers, Tullos (Dismissal)

Mr. Hector Hughes: asked the Minister of Labour if he is aware that about 60 men have just been dismissed from Tullos factory, Aberdeen, owing to a recession in the industry there; and what steps he is taking to provide employment for these men.

Sir W. Monckton: Yes, Sir; 53 men and 10 women were paid off from Tullos factory with wages until 7th May. The Employment Exchange Service will assist those who register to find other work.

Mr. Hughes: I thank the Minister for that answer. Does he hold out any prospect that this unemployment will cease and alternative employment will be offered? Does he realise that, from the national point of view, this loss in productivity is very serious?

Sir W. Monckton: Of the men mentioned in the answer, 13 are fully skilled and there will be no difficulty in placing them. What is causing this redundancy is a temporary slowing down in subcontracting work which, it is hoped, will be resumed at the former rate by the autumn.

Aircraft Industry, Scotland

Mr. Hector Hughes: asked the Minister of Labour if he is aware that a recession in the aeroplane industry in Scotland is increasing unemployment there; how many workers in this industry in Scotland are now unemployed, and in which factories; and what steps he is taking to find them work.

Sir W. Monckton: No, Sir. The number of persons employed in the aircraft industry in Scotland in March, 1954, was nearly 16,000. This was over 2,000 higher than the previous year. Less than


1 per cent, were unemployed in April, and the Employment Exchange Service will continue to assist them to get work.

Mr. Hughes: Could the Minister say how it is that though there is no general unemployment in this industry in Scotland there is unemployment in Aberdeen? Why Aberdeen?

Sir W. Monckton: One must begin with the satisfactory news that, in the aircraft industry in general in Scotland, there is no or very little unemployment. From time to time there are places where the position is more difficult than in others, but I do not apprehend any serious unemployment in this industry.

Mr. Robens: Would the right hon. and learned Gentleman also give consideration to the difficult position arising in Northern Ireland as a result of redundancy in this aircraft work?

Sir W. Monckton: That is quite a different area, but it is the same kind of question and I am already giving it such consideration as I can.

Tobacco Factory, Stirling (Closing)

Mr. Malcolm MacPherson: asked the Minister of Labour whether he is aware that the British-American Tobacco Company employ over 200 workers at their factory in Stirling; and what steps he is taking to ensure that other work is available for these workers when this factory closes down.

Sir W. Monckton: I am aware that the British-American Tobacco Company is dosing its factory at Stirling next month, and that this will cause about 200 workers to become redundant. My local officers are taking steps to find other employment for them and I am glad to say that 77 have already secured other jobs.

Mr. MacPherson: Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman aware that about three-quarters of these workers are girls and young women, for whom it is already very difficult to find employment in the area?

Sir W. Monckton: Yes, but I can assure the hon. Member that in addition to the 77 who are to become redundant next month and have already got other jobs I have firm hopes for another 30, and I shall pursue my endeavours for the rest.

Oral Answers to Questions — HOSPITALS

Ambulance Service, Oldham (Expenditure)

Mr. Hale: asked the Minister of Health the saving in public funds estimated to be achieved in the area of the Oldham Hospital Management Committee and in England and Wales, respectively, as a result of his recent circular advocating limited use of ambulance services.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health (Miss Patricia Hornsby-Smith): The object of the circular is to ensure that any extravagance which may exist is eliminated. Until action under the circular is well advanced my right hon. Friend has no means of estimating what saving there may be.

Mr. Hale: Will the Parliamentary Secretary bear in mind that it is the essence of an ambulance service that it should be ambulatory and not static? A static ambulance with a static driver is not economical. Is it not a fact that this precious circular lists 19 separate ways in which it is suggested that a few odd coppers' worth of service can be saved in dealing with the maimed, the halt, the sick and the dying?

Miss Hornsby-Smith: That is an entirely false interpretation of my right hon. Friend's circular. The aim is to eliminate extravagance and not to limit proper demands.

Harlow New Town

Mr. Sorensen: asked the Minister of Health when it is anticipated that a hospital will be built and made available at Harlow New Town; and whether the plans include provision for a special children's ward and a modern health clinic.

The Minister of Health (Mr. Iain Macleod): The scheme will begin as soon as it can be fitted into the capital programme. I am informed that the Regional Hospital Board's plans include a children's department and consultative clinics, and that a health centre is to be provided on an adjoining site by the responsible authorities.

Mr. Sorensen: Can the Minister say exactly when these two very important departments are likely to be opened?

Mr. Macleod: No, I cannot. It is a question of priorities and essentially one for the regional hospital board. There are a great many other similar problems, perhaps even more urgent, in, for example, the Hatfield-Welwyn area, that have to be taken into account.

Children's Nurses (Recruitment)

Mr. Sorensen: asked the Minister of Health, in view of the special requirements for child nursing in hospitals and the need for specialised training of nurses for this purpose, to what extent special wards or departments have been, and are being, opened in hospitals; and what efforts are being made to secure recruits for this type of nursing.

Miss Hornsby-Smith: At the end of 1952, the latest date for which figures are available, there were in England and Wales some 24,000 hospital beds for short-stay sick children, about 10,000 of them being in hospitals devoted entirely to children.
My right hon. Friend is not aware of any need for special recruitment measures in this field, which is a very popular one.

Oral Answers to Questions — MINISTRY OF HEALTH

Tuberculosis, Tyneside

Mr. Short: asked the Minister of Health if he will investigate the relationship between the incidence of tuberculosis on Tyneside and the pollution of the tidal part of the river.

Mr. Iain Macleod: I am advised that any such relationship is highly improbable.

Mr. Short: Is the Minister aware that in spite of the very great improvements since the war the proportion of tuberculosis on Tyneside is still almost twice the national one? Is he further aware that the pollution of the tidal waters of the Tyne is really shocking? It is one of the most heavily-polluted rivers in the country. May there not be some connection between these facts? Will he not at least look into the problem?

Mr. Macleod: It was as a result of doing so that I gave the answer. It is certainly true that the incidence of tuberculosis in this area is much higher than in the rest of the country, but I am

advised that of the one or two cases mentioned in medical literature there was only one on the North-East coast, in 1949, which might be linked up with polluted water. Infection is normally passed in the air through the medium of a droplet or of dust and, therefore, would not normally be connected with water pollution.

Mr. Popplewell: Is the Minister aware of the proud and important status of the Tyne in the life of the people of the North-East? Is he also aware that we all regret its continued use as an open sewer? It is- having a very detrimental effect in that area. Will he endeavour to influence local authorities to try to introduce a comprehensive sewerage scheme in the area, so as to prevent the Tyne being used as it is at present?

Mr. Macleod: That is the responsibility of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government, but if any evidence came to me from that area that there was a link between what is admittedly a still high, though a dropping, incidence of tuberculosis and any pollution, I should be very glad to go into the matter.

Mental Nurses (Shortage)

Mr. D. Healey: asked the Minister of Health whether, in view of the shortage of mental nurses, he will approve the establishment of a separate Whitley Council for mental nurses.

Mr. Iain Macleod: No, Sir; I do not think that this would help in any way.

Mr. Healey: Is the Minister aware that his reply will disappoint many people who believe that so long as pay and conditions in the nursing services for the mental and mentally defective are subject to the same conditions as those of the nursing service as a whole there will be very little prospect of attracting new recruits to this extremely exacting branch of the profession?

Mr. Macleod: Although this problem causes us all concern, the solution must be a matter of opinion. It is a much wider affair than a mere change of Whitley machinery. I have given the House figures showing that we are tackling this problem on a much wider front, and I look to results from this rather than from the suggestion contained in the hon. Member's Question.

Mr. Lindgren: Does the Minister agree that, in general, the introduction of individual Whitley Councils for individual grades is a retrograde step, and that the larger the Council and the greater the number of grades included the easier it is to make a comparison of the duties performed?

Mr. Macleod: That is a very wide generalisation. I think that the present procedure is right in this respect. There is a special standing committee for mental nurses on the Staff Side of the Whitley Council.

Mr. Sorensen: asked the Minister of Health the present shortage of nursing staff in hospitals for mental defectives; whether this is an improvement or otherwise compared with preceding years; how many beds are not used because of the shortage; how many are now waiting admission; what further steps have been taken or considered in order to secure additional trainees and nurses in these hospitals; and what percentage of student nurses do not complete their training.

Miss Hornsby-Smith: Estimates in this field vary and are not very reliable. The latest is about 2,300 for December, 1952. The nursing staff of mental deficiency hospitals was, at 30th September, 1953, 6,600 full-time and 2,200 part-time, an increase of 480 full-time and 740 part-time over the figures at 31st December, 1948. At 31st December, 1952, there were 1,587 unstaffed beds. The waiting list at 31st December, 1953, was 8,521.
I will send the hon. Member a copy of the memorandum to hospital authorities dealing with measures taken to improve recruitment. Between 60 per cent, and 70 per cent, of student nurses in this field fail to complete training.

Mr. Sorensen: While thanking the hon. Lady for her reply, and being gratified that there has been some slight progress, may I ask whether any extra special efforts are being made to recruit nurses for this very important branch of the nursing service, particularly in view of the large number who give up the work after a short time?

Miss Hornsby-Smith: The hon. Member will be aware that my right hon. Friend is concentrating on the recruiting

of nurses for this work this year. Experiments are taking place under the aegis of the General Nursing Council. We have recommended various measures that are outlined in the memorandum that I will send to the hon. Member.

Ophthalmic Examinations

Mr. J. Johnson: asked the Minister of Health how often a person may have his sight examined under the supplementary ophthalmic service.

Miss Hornsby-Smith: As often as necessary, but ophthalmic medical practitioners and ophthalmic opticians were asked in 1950 not to repeat a test within a year except where there was special reason for doing so.

Mr. Johnson: Is the hon. Lady aware that one large executive council on the South Coast is telling its doctors not to examine patients more than once in 12 months? Will she take action in this matter if I give her particulars of the case?

Miss Hornsby-Smith: The general instructions were that practitioners should secure the permission of the Ophthalmic Services Committee where there had been a previous sight test within the year, except in urgent cases, or cases notified to the patient's doctor as subject to further examination. If the cases which the hon. Member has in mind come into that second category I shall be only too happy to look into the matter.

Inoculated Children (Health Effects)

Lieut.-Colonel Bromley-Davenport: asked the Minister of Health whether he is aware of the dissatisfaction felt by Mr. Bradshaw, particulars of whose case have been submitted to his Department, about the treatment given to his child Jane, who is suffering from speech deformity following the last of a series of four inoculations for diphtheria and whooping cough; that, as Mr. Bradshaw could see no improvement in his child's health following attendance at a public clinic as such attendance affected the nerves of both mother and child, he sent her to a speech therapist with beneficial results; and whether, in view of the special circumstances, he will make some payment to Mr. Bradshaw for the treatment the child is now receiving.

Mr. Iain Macleod: rose—

Lieut.-Colonel Bromley-Davenport: On a point of order. Before the Question is answered I want to emphasise that it relates to the combined inoculations against diphtheria and whooping cough, and not against diphtheria alone. There has been some misunderstanding on the subject.

Mr. Macleod: I have carefully examined the facts of this distressing case, but I do not consider the circumstances are such as would justify a contribution towards the cost of private treatment.

Lieut.-Colonel Bromley-Davenport: Is my right hon. Friend aware that two doctors have testified that they considered that the defective speech of this child is due to these injections? Is he further aware that teachers under the National Health Service simply have not the time to give proper treatment to this child? Why should these unfortunate parents have to pay large sums of money to try to save this child's life because of what they and certain doctors consider to be the bad treatment of the National Health Service?

Mr. Macleod: I cannot accept that statement. It is certainly a possibility, but it is not certain that this speech defect is due to the inoculations. As far as treatment for Jane is concerned, it has (been suggested—and I make the offer again—that we should, if necessary, give extra time out of ordinary clinic hours, in the babies' hospital, to this very difficult case. I do not think we can do more than that. If the parents accept that offer, or my hon. and gallant Friend will consult me on the matter, I shall see what I can do, but all the conditions of treatment are available for use within the National Health Service.

Mr. I. O. Thomas: Will the Minister confirm that his answer means that full facilities for speech therapy treatment are available in the National Health Service for this child?

Mr. Macleod: Yes, Sir. It is fair to say that the parents were rather dissatisfied with the amount of time which could be given to any one child, and, therefore, wanted to have private treatment outside the scheme, which they are quite entitled to do.

Lieut.-Colonel Bromley-Davenport: asked the Minister of Health the number of children during the last five years whose health was affected by inoculation for diphtheria and whooping cough; how many of these cases received treatment under the National Health Service; in how many cases the children regained their full health; and in how many cases there is permanent injury or deep-seated injury.

Mr. Iain Macleod: I regret that the detailed information asked for is not available, but serious illness attributable to inoculation is known to be extremely rare.

Lieut.-Colonel Bromley-Davenport: Is my right hon. Friend aware that since I tabled this Question I have received evidence from parents all over the country on this subject? One poor woman has three children out of four whose speech has been affected. If I send him particulars of these cases will my right hon. Friend promise to look into them very carefully and, if necessary, inquire into the whole matter?

Mr. Macleod: It is true that there is a minimal hazard attached to immunisation. We all know that. But it is equally true that the importance which has been attached to such immunisation in recent years has done an enormous amount to lessen the incidence of these diseases.

Dr. Stross: Can the Minister say what proportion of cases were affected by paralysis of the palate when they suffered from diphtheria before inoculation was invented? Was it not much higher then than it is now?

Mr. Macleod: I have not those figures with me, but I will see whether they are available. Certainly, the number, in relation to the total number of diphtheria inoculations carried out each year—which is more than a million—is tiny.

Lieut.-Colonel Bromley-Davenport: My right hon. Friend has missed my point. We all admit that these inoculations do a tremendous amount of good. I am complaining that there are cases where the wretched parents are hit very hard. This poor woman has three children out of four—[HON. MEMBERS: "Speech."] Speech my foot. My right hon. Friend cannot explain that away.

Mr. Macleod: I am not trying to explain anything away. This is a very distressing case. I have read all the papers with great care, and I shall be happy to discuss the matter with my hon. and gallant Friend. It still remains true that medicine is not an exact science, and that risks are attached to immunisation or any other form of treatment.

Lieut.-Colonel Bromley-Davenport: asked the Minister of Health whether, under his regulations, special treatment, outside the National Health Service, is ever given to children in cases where a deterioration in a child's health may be the result of treatment or action by a National Health Service doctor or hospital.

Mr. Iain Macleod: No, Sir.

Lieut.-Colonel Bromley-Davenport: I am "browned off."

Day Nurseries, Harrogate

Mr. Ramsden: asked the Minister of Health if he is aware of the proposal to close down one of the two day nurseries in Harrogate; and whether he is satisfied that adequate extra provision will be made in the other for health cases before this proposal is put into effect.

Miss Hornsby-Smith: I would refer my hon. Friend to the reply given to the hon. Member for Normanton (Mr. A. Roberts) on 6th May.

Mr. Ramsden: asked the Minister of Health how many places there are in each of the two day nurseries in Harrogate; and how many of those who now use them fall into the category of health cases.

Miss Hornsby-Smith: Forty in each. The latest available figures show a total of 69 health cases, including cases of housing difficulties.

Mr. Ramsden: In view of the preponderance of health cases over industrial cases, can my hon. Friend say what her further policy will be for the accommodation of the health cases?

Miss Hornsby-Smith: There is a period of two months after the local health authority has given notice during which interested bodies may lay their considerations or objections before my right hon. Friend, and the closing time is not until 19th May. I think it would be premature now to anticipate what they may be, or my right hon. Friend's decision.

Oral Answers to Questions — EDUCATION

Schools Television Service

Mr. G. Jeger: asked the Minister of Education whether, in view of the long delay before a school television service can be started by the British Broadcasting Corporation, she will invite commercial television interests to undertake this service.

The Minister of Education (Miss Florence Horsbrugh): No, Sir.

Mr. Jeger: May I thank the right hon. Lady for agreeing with us that commercial television interests cannot be trusted to look after the children?

Wokingham Secondary School (Cost)

Mr. Remnant: asked the Minister of Education to state the all-in cost of the Wokingham Secondary School.

Miss Horsbrugh: I regret that the final accounts for this school are not yet settled, but negotiations are being pressed on so as to get a final figure with the least possible delay.

Mr. Remnant: As this school has been in occupation by children for educational purposes for over a year, will my right hon. Friend give an assurance that this information will be speedily obtained?

Miss Horsbrugh: Yes, it certainly will be, but I think my hon. Friend will realise that even when the children are in a new school there is generally a certain amount of work still to be done. Very often 18 months and sometimes slightly more are required before the final account can be approved.

Grammar and Modern Secondary Schools (Differentiation)

Sir H. Williams: asked the Minister of Education the difference between a grammar school and a modern secondary school.

Miss Horsbrugh: I am sending my hon. Friend a copy of Ministry of Education pamphlet No. 9. This describes both the similarities and the differences, and remains a useful survey of secondary education, although more experience has been gained since it was published in 1947.

Sir H. Williams: What statutory authority is there for this differentiation?

Miss Horsbrugh: There is no statutory authority for the different names.

Mr. M. Stewart: Will the right hon. Lady also send to her hon. Friend a copy of the kind of tests which are imposed to tell to which of these schools children of 11 should go?

Miss Horsbrugh: That is entirely a matter for the local education authority, and I do not interfere.

Nursery Schools

Mr. George Craddock: asked the Minister of Education if, in view of present and future needs, she will consider lifting the ban on the building of nursery schools, by the removal of Circular 155, issued in 1947.

Mr. J. Hynd: asked the Minister of Education whether she will now withdraw Circular No. 155 and thus enable education authorities to proceed with the provision of nursery schools.

Miss Horsbrugh: I would refer the hon. Members to the answer which my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary gave to the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) on 15th April last.

Mr. Craddock: Will the right hon. Lady go very carefully into this matter to see whether the Government can in some part carry out their programme that they enunciated at the last Election? If the Government want to help the people they would do well to make it possible for these nursery schools to be built.

Miss Horsbrugh: I quite agree, but I think the hon. Gentleman realises that our first duty must be to the children of compulsory school age. There has been a slight increase since 1951 in the number of nursery schools, and in the number of children at them, but I cannot say that we can reverse the policy laid down in 1947 until we have got ahead with the building programme for the children of compulsory school age.

Grammar Schools

Mr. Morley: asked the Minister of Education (1) in which local education authority areas the percentage of

children aged 13 receiving grammar school education to the total of children aged 13 in maintained and assisted schools in the area is less than 10 per cent, and between 10 and 15 per cent., respectively;
(2) in which local education authority areas the percentage of children receiving grammar school education to the total of children aged 13 in maintained and assisted schools in the area is between 25 and 35 per cent, and above 35 per cent., respectively.

Miss Horsbrugh: In January, 1953, the numbers of local education authorities concerned in the four categories mentioned in the Questions were 7, 27, 23, and 10, respectively. This answer takes no account of children for whose grammar school education each authority provides in schools outside its own jurisdiction, but it includes places available to children from other areas. It does not, therefore, give an accurate picture of the degree of opportunity open to children in each area to obtain a grammar school education.
I will circulate in the OFFICIAL REPORT a statement of the areas concerned.

Mr. Morley: What action is the right hon. Lady taking in the case of local authorities that have not many grammar school places to offer to ensure that they should have grammar school courses in their modern secondary schools?

Miss Horsbrugh: I am hoping to have before long fuller information about the degree of opportunity there is for children in each area. I would remind the hon. Gentleman that a good many things have to be taken into consideration, such as the need for other types of secondary education and the availability of places at schools not maintained or assisted by the local education authority.

Mr. Snow: Is the right hon. Lady aware that there is some disquiet about the allocation of grammar school places not merely within the area of a local education authority, but within the divisional area as a whole? It seems to be the case, certainly in Staffordshire, that where there is a grammar school the greater is the number of places allotted within the immediate vicinity, and that places where there is not a grammar school have a much smaller share of the available places. Would the right hon. Lady look into that?

Miss Horsbrugh: Yes. I have already looked into some cases that have been brought to my notice. I think it would be better if the hon. Gentleman took the matter up with the local education authority.

Less than10 per cent.
Between 10per cent, and15 per cent.
Between25 per cent, and 35 per cent.
35 per cent, and over


Blackburn
Barnsley
ENGLAND
ENGLAND


Bolton
Bedfordshire
Bradford
Gloucester


Gateshead
Birmingham
Canterbury
Westmorland


Isles of Scilly
Bristol
Cornwall



Rutland
Coventry
Darlington
WALES


Salford
Dudley
Devon
Breconshire


West Bromwich
Durham
Dorset
Caernarvonshire



Essex
Eastbourne
Cardiganshire



Isle of Wight
Gloucestershire
Carmarthenshire



Liverpool
Huntingdonshire
Denbighshire



Manchester
Isle of Ely
Merionethshire



Newcastle-upon-Tyne
Lincoln
Montgomeryshire



Norfolk
Peterborough Joint Board
Pembrokeshire.



Northumberland
Southend-on-Sea




Nottingham
Wallasey




Nottinghamshire
York




Preston





Reading
WALES




St. Helens
Cardiff




Sheffield
Flintshire




Staffordshire
Glamorgan




Stoke-on-Trent
Merthyr Tydfil




Suffolk West
Monmouthshire




Sunderland
Newport (Mon.)




Wakefield
Radnorshire




Warrington
Swansea




West Hartlepool

Eltham Hill Grammar School Pupils (Transfer)

Mr. Mayhew: asked the Minister of Education whether she will make a statement on her refusal to approve the transfer of Eltham Hill Secondary School for girls to Kidbrooke Comprehensive School.

Miss Horsbrugh: I considered the London County Council's arguments in support of their proposal to cease to maintain the Eltham Hill Grammar School and to transfer the pupils to Kidbrooke Comprehensive School on its opening. I studied the many objections received, the grounds on which they were made, and the authority's observations on these objections. After taking into account the reputation of the Eltham Hill school, and the success with which it has served its purpose as a grammar school, I concluded that it would not be educationally advantageous to close it.

Mr. Mayhew: Is the Minister aware of the widespread anxiety that Kidbrooke Comprehensive School should be a

Mr. Gower: Would my right hon. Friend tell parents that if they were to come to live in Wales their children would have a better chance of grammar school education?

Following is the statement:

success? Is she aware that the whole future of this promising school is being jeopardised by prejudice and by hostility towards it on her part?

Miss Horsbrugh: The Kidbrooke School will open as a comprehensive school exactly as was planned under the London Development Plan. There was no thought then of closing Eltham Hill and transferring the children from Eltham to Kidbrooke. As to the popularity of the decision, I think we must leave the choice to parents and teachers themselves to decide where they wish to be, as far as possible. I am glad to hear that the London County Council has given full opportunity to both teachers and children to transfer, if they wish, from Eltham to Kidbrooke.

Mr. H. Brooke: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the statutory requirement to which she refers is upon not only her but also all local education authorities—the requirement that children are to be educated as far as possible in accordance with the wishes of their


parents? Is she further aware that the overwhelming majority of the parents of girls at Eltham Hill School are grateful to her for her decision and applaud her courage?

Mr. H. Morrison: Is the right hon. Lady aware that the facts which have been asserted are disputed? Secondly, can she assure the House that in coming to her conclusion upon this matter—and we agree that she should come to a conclusion on the weight of the arguments and evidence on both sides—she has not been actuated by party political considerations? Did she or did she not encourage the London Conservative Party organisation to involve themselves in this matter and give them some impression that she would support their efforts to oppose the closure?

Miss Horsbrugh: Under the 1944 Act it is the Minister who takes the decision. Under that Act, too, it is the duty of the local authority to publish notices informing the electors of their rights, which are that, in connection with the closing or opening of a school, 10 or more local government electors may object to the Minister. I have said, and I am glad to have the opportunity of saying it again today, that one change has taken place since the Miscellaneous Provisions Act was passed; the local government electors now have that opportunity for only two months instead of the three months open to them before. Local government electors have their opportunity and their rights. The local authority has its rights. But the final decision is the responsibility of the Minister under the 1944 Act.

Mr. H. Morrison: If I may say so, I was quite aware of that. I knew that the Minister has the final decision. Would the right hon. Lady be good enough to answer the body of my question? [An HON. MEMBER: "It was insulting."] It was not insulting. Will she say whether there was political partiality in conjunction with the London Conservative Party?

Miss Horsbrugh: I thought that 1 should not have to believe that the right hon. Gentleman was suggesting to me that, when taking a decision which lies upon me as Minister of Education, I took political consideration into account. 1 have said at Conservative meetings, at

Labour meetings, and at educational meetings throughout the country that local government electors have certain rights. I have added, over and over again, that when that time is up it is no use their complaining. They have their rights now for two months to send in their objections, instead of for three months. That is the information which I have given and which I will continue to give.

Miss Bacon: Is the right hon. Lady aware that her decision strikes not only at the Kidbrooke School but at the whole of the London County Council plan for comprehensive schools? Can she explain how there can be, in an area, both a comprehensive school and a grammar school; because obviously, if the grammar school is there, children have been creamed off? The right hon. Lady spoke of the rights of parents under the Education Act. Do I take it that any parent whose child is at a modern school can automatically ask for the child to be transferred to a grammar school?

Miss Horsbrugh: The point which the hon. Lady put in the first part of her question does not arise. There are grammar schools in that area already, as well as a comprehensive school, and the London County Council made it clear that if the Eltham Hill School were closed there were about 80 places at other grammar schools to which children could have been transferred if their parents so wished. As the hon. Lady knows, in the London Development Plan Kidbrooke was to open without Eltham Hill being closed.
As for the transfer between a modern school and a grammar school, it is for the local education authorities to try as far as possible to meet the wishes of the parent, if they think the education is suitable for the child's age, aptitude and ability.

Mr. Mayhew: In view of the highly unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I beg to give notice that I shall raise the matter on the Adjournment.

BECHUANALAND (LOBATSI ABATTOIR)

Mr. Brockway: asked the Undersecretary of State for Commonwealth Relations if he will make a statement


regarding the future of the colonial development abattoir at Lobatsi, Bechuanaland.

Mr. J. Johnson: asked the Undersecretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, whether he will make a statement regarding the future plans for the Lobatsi abattoir of Bechuanaland.

The Under-Sccretary of State for Commonwealth Relations (Mr. John Foster): I would refer the hon. Member to my reply to a similar Question by the hon. Member for Flint, East (Mrs. White) on 29th April, 1954.

Mr. Brockway: Have there not been certain developments since that date, and has not Mr. William Rendell, the General Manager of the Colonial Development Corporation, met the European Advisory Council? Also, should there not fee discussions on this issue with the African farmers who are concerned?

Mr. Foster: I do not think there has been any development since 29th April. The local Administration and Her Majesty's Government will of course consider all the interests involved. The issues are very complex and I quite agree with the hon. Member that they must be seriously considered.

Mr. J. Johnson: Can the Minister confirm or deny the suggestion that neither the Union of South Africa nor Southern Rhodesia will be taking meat in future from this abattoir at Lobatsi and that this is leading to uncertainty about the future of the scheme? Is he prepared to do anything about that in the future, if it is a fact?

Mr. Foster: If it is a fact something would have to be done, but I do not think it is so. I believe that the Union will continue to take the meat. That is a matter which will be very seriously looked at.

Oral Answers to Questions — TRADE AND COMMERCE

Imported Goods (Marking)

Mr. Russell: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he has now reached a decision about the withdrawal of the option under the Merchandise Marks Act, 1926, which allows imported

goods, which are required to be marked, to bear the words "Foreign" or "Empire" instead of the name of the country of origin.

The President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Peter Thorneycroft): No, Sir: the matter is still under consideration.

Mr. Russell: As this matter has been under consideration for several months, can my right hon. Friend say when his conclusion will be reached? Is he taking into consideration the desire of many consumers on this point?

Mr. Thorneycroft: I am taking into consideration the diverse and sometimes conflicting views of quite a number of organisations, but I hope to reach a decision before long.

International Trade Barriers (Removal)

Sir W. Smithers: asked the President of the Board of Trade, in view of official statements of policy made in discussions with the Federal German Government and elsewhere that Britain is trying to encourage more freedom in international trade, when he hopes to remove all barriers to the international movement of goods.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: Substantial progress has been made by a number of countries, including ourselves, in the reduction of barriers to trade, but I cannot predict the speed and extent to which further progress may prove possible.

Sir W. Smithers: Do the Government realise that the expression of pious hopes at international conferences does no good? What we want is deeds, not words. Do the Government also realise that a policy of free trade, freely convertible currency and no coercion is the only policy to save Britain and the world?

Mr. Thorneycroft: I think Her Majesty's Government can point to a good deal more than pious hopes in the achievements of their commercial policy.

INCOME TAX AND SURTAX (STATISTICS)

Mr. Osborne: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer how much revenue was produced by Income Tax and Surtax in the years ended April, 1910, 1921, 1935


and 1954, respectively; and what percentage this represented of the total revenue of the year in each case.

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. John Boyd-Carpenter): As the answer to this Question contains a number of figures I will, with permission, circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Mr. Osborne: Can my hon. Friend say whether the amount which is being produced by direct taxation has been falling in the last period, and whether he expects that this tendency will continue in the future?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: In the four years which my hon. Friend selected, the figures which I give in the answer which I will circulate show an increase.
Following is the information:
The table below shows in thousands of pounds the total Exchequer receipt from Income Tax and Surtax compared with the total ordinary revenue in the four selected financial years.

Financial Year
Income Tax and Surtax
Total Ordinary Revenue
Percentage



£'000
£'000



1909–10
13,295
131,696
10·1


1920–21
394,146
1,425,985
27·6


1934–35
280,042
804,629
34·8


1953–54
1,863,391
4,368,130
42·7

GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS (COST)

Sir W. Smithers: asked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury (how many officials, clerks and industrial workers, respectively, are employed by Her Majesty's Government; and what is the cost to the taxpayer of their salaries and other expenses.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: On 1st January, 1954, there were 657,385 non-industrial civil servants, of whom about 226,000 were in the clerical, sub-clerical and typing grades; these figures include 248,338 Post Office staff. There were also 434,604 industrial civil servants.
For the year ended 30th September, 1953, the salaries and wages bill for the non-industrial staff was £349.6 million. I regret that similar information

for the industrial staff is not readily available.

Sir W. Smithers: Will the Treasury do all in their power to reduce the number of the civil servants who are non-producers and who do not help the trade of the country?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Without accepting the implication in my hon. Friend's question against officials whose duty it is to carry out the duties which this House imposes on them, I would remind him that since the change of Government there has been a substantial reduction in the total.

Sir W. Smithers: Keep going on.

Oral Answers to Questions — AGRICULTURE

Fatstock Marketing Scheme (Objections)

Sir W. Smithers: asked the Minister of Agriculture whether he will agree to hold regional inquiries into objections to the proposed Fatstock Marketing Scheme, in view of the large number of livestock producers who are concerned at the penal clauses contained therein.

The Minister of Agriculture (Sir Thomas Dngdale): The last date for objections to the proposed Fatstock Marketing Scheme was yesterday, 12th May. I am now considering, with my right hon. Friends the Secretary of State for the Home Department and the Secretary of State for Scotland, whether a public inquiry should be held and at what place or places.

Sir W. Smithers: Can my right hon. Friend say, in relation to this and other cases, what is the good of removing one control and imposing another one equally vicious?

Sir T. Dugdale: I do not think that my hon. Friend has any idea of the procedure over the producer marketing boards. They are producer boards, and at this stage of the procedure my right hon. Friends and I decide whether there is to be a public inquiry or not.

Food Production (Policy)

Sir R. De la Bère: asked the Minister of Agriculture whether, in view of the uncertainty of farmers throughout


the country in connection with the development of their production of food, the Government's future agricultural policy is for an expansion or for a controlled contraction of home production in this country.

Sir T. Dugdale: I would direct my hon. Friend's attention to paragraph 11 of the recent White Paper on the 1954 Annual Review and Determination of Guarantees, which clearly states that the expansion of net output to 60 per cent, above pre-war is still a major objective.

Sir R. De la Bèere: May I ask my right hon. Friend how he thinks, in view of the quantifying and many other matters which the Chancellor has alluded to, it is possible to relate them to any possible form of expansion? Does he realise that the matter cannot be lightly dismissed? I shall continue to ask questions about this.

Sir T. Dugdale: Perhaps my hon. Friend will remember that I suggested that he should read the White Paper. May I also suggest that, as well as reading the White Paper, he should read the answer to a Question which I gave to my hon. Friend the Member foe New-bury (Mr. Hurd) the day before yesterday, which shows a remarkable expansion in production.

Mr. T. Williams: Will the right hon. Gentleman also advise his hon. Friend to read paragraph 13 of Command Paper No. 9104—the latest White Paper —and inform his hon. Friend exactly what the Chancellor meant when he said "They might start to quantify production."

Sir T. Dugdale: I do not think it would be appropriate to reply by way of question and answer, but I have a note to remind my hon. Friend of paragraph 13 of the White Paper. So far as this year is concerned, the only arrangements that provide for any kind of limitation are those for milk.

Mr. T. Williams: Does the Minister think that that answer will be regarded by the hon. Member for Worcestershire, South (Sir R. De la Bèere) as "thoroughly unsatisfactory"?

Myxomatosis

Major Anstnither-Gray: asked the Minister of Agriculture how far north the rabbit disease of myxomatosis has spread up to date.

Sir T. Dugdale: The most northerly outbreaks reported so far are on the Suffolk-Norfolk border, near Southwold and Mendham.

Major Anstruther-Gray: Has there been a noticeable spread in other directions?

Sir T. Dugdale: In addition to the answer to the question which I have given, I think that the House might like to know that there has been a notable spread, during the last three weeks or so, in East and South-East England. Isolated outbreaks have been confirmed in the Isle of Wight and during the last few days in Gloucestershire, Radnorshire and Cornwall.

Captain Duncan: Is my right hon. Friend aware that it was reported in the Press recently that some Cumberland butchers took rabbits from an infected area which were taken back to Cumberland? Can he say whether there has been any myxomatosis in Cumberland since then?

Sir T. Dugdale: Not so far as has been reported to me. So far as I can ascertain, there is no justification for these rumours.

Oral Answers to Questions — HOME DEPARTMENT

Prisoners (Preventive Detention)

Mr. Fenner Brockway: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on the methods employed for the provision of work for preventive detention prisoners on their discharge.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Sir Hugh Lucas-Tooth): Preventive detention prisoners are released on licence to the supervision of the Central After-Care Association, who arrange for every prisoner to have the opportunity of a personal interview with an officer of the Ministry of Labour prior to his release, so that his registration for suitable employment can be completed in advance. The Association arranges also for the prisoner to be personally advised and assisted on release


by one of its Associates, who will usually be a probation officer.
There is also an experimental scheme now in operation whereby a small number of prisoners in the third stage of a sentence of preventive detention are enabled to take up outside employment for some months prior to their discharge.

Mr. Brockway: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that there is some confusion about this matter in the minds of the prisoners and apparently in the minds of certain of the staff as to whether it is the responsibility of the prisoner nearing discharge to try to find a post for himself; or does he leave that to the Association?

Sir H. Lucas-Tooth: I was not aware of any such confusion. If the hon. Member will give me particulars, I will, of course, have the matter looked into.

Mr. Fenner Brockway: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many men have been refused and granted one-third remission of their prison sentences by the Board for Licence on Preventive Detention; how far the Board at Parkhurst is assisted by an advisory committee in London; and who are the members and by whom they are appointed; and what reports the Board receive of the men's records from the police, the welfare officer and the governor.

Sir H. Lucas-Tooth: A prisoner serving a sentence of preventive detention is not eligible for release on licence when two-thirds of the sentence have been served unless he has been admitted to the third stage of the sentence. Admission to the third stage is decided by an advisory board, which sits at Parkhurst and is not assisted or controlled by any other body in London.
The prison rules provide that the advisory board shall consist of three members of the prison's Board of Visitors approved by the Secretary of State, and such other persons not exceeding four as the Secretary of State may appoint; and that the chairman shall be appointed by the Secretary of State.
The Chairman is Mr. Bertram Reece, a Metropolitan magistrate. The members representing the Board of Visitors are Lieut.-Colonel C. W. Brannon, Mr. G. C. Russell, and Lieut.-Colonel F. C. R. Britten. The other members are Mr. Duncan Fairn, Director of Prison

Administration; Mr. J. C. V. Lovatt, a principal probation officer; and Captain R. C. Williams, a retired prison commissioner.
The Board is assisted by the Director of the Men's Section of the Central After-Care Association, and has before it all the information about the prisoner that is available in his record and also special reports by the prison governor and his principal subordinates, the medical officer and the chaplain or prison minister.
The number of prisoners who have been released after serving two-thirds of the sentence is 36; the number who were eligible for admission to the third stage but were not selected for it is 207.

Mr. Brockway: While thanking the hon. Gentleman for that very full reply, may I ask him whether he is aware that a great deal of the unrest at Parkhurst is due to uncertainty about remission of sentences as men approach their discharge? Will he consult the Governor as to whether there is not some procedure by which this unrest can be removed?

Sir H. Lucas-Tooth: If the hon. Member has any particular case in mind and will let me have the particulars, I will see that it is looked into.

Mechanically-propelled Vehicles (Children under 16)

Mr. Baldwin: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will take steps to make it illegal for children under the age of 16 years to drive tractors or other mechanically-propelled vehicles, in view of the fatal accidents recently reported.

Sir H. Lucas-Tooth: While my right hon. and learned Friend shares my hon. Friend's concern about these accidents, he can hold out no hope that time could be found in the near future for legislation.

Mr. Baldwin: Is my hon. Friend aware of the problem that arises as a result of these youngsters driving tractors? As these are capable and ambitious lads, whom we cannot afford to lose from the agricultural industry, can he give the matter further consideration?

Sir H. Lucas-Tooth: My right hon. and learned Friend is consulting the Minister of Agriculture and the Secretary of State for Scotland to see whether anything can be done.

Mr. Manuel: Will the hon. Gentleman bear in mind what has been said by his hon. Friend? Is he aware that mechanisation in the agricultural industry has increased enormously in recent years and that we have reached the stage when measures are necessary to prevent young people under 16 from driving tractors?

Sir H. Lucas-Tooth: No doubt these considerations will be present to the minds of my right hon. Friends in the consultations

Foster Parents (Payments)

Mr. Arbuthnot: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many councils deduct family allowances when making payments to foster parents.

Sir H. Lucas-Tooth: I regret that the information is not available.

MINISTER OF DEFENCE (STATEMENT)

Mr. Emrys Hughes: asked the Prime Minister if the recent statement made by Field Marshal Alexander at Copenhagen regarding the conduct of operations in a possible future war involving Great Britain represents the policy of Her Majesty's Government.

The Prime Minister (Sir Winston Churchill): My noble and gallant Friend made no statement of policy whilst in Copenhagen. In private conversations he referred to what might happen in a possible future war—in a spirit which should command agreement and certainly spread confidence.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that a report of this statement which appeared in the "Scotsman" said that this country would bear the heaviest atomic attack in the event of war with Russia, that this country would be knocked out, and would be liberated by Canada and the other Dominions? Is that the sort of thing which inspires confidence in the civilian population in this country?

The Prime Minister: My noble Friend was indicating that even if the worst that people imagine were to come to pass, we should not give in.

Mr. Bottomley: Can the Prime Minister tell us whether a report is to be made to Parliament of a meeting this week between the Danish Minister of Defence and the Minister of Defence of Her Majesty's Government?

ASIA (U.K.-U.S. POLICY)

Mr. Wyatt: asked the Prime Minister whether he will now make a statement on the points of agreement and difference with the United States of America which have arisen over policy in Asia before and during the Geneva Conference.

The Prime Minister: The relations of Great Britain with other countries are a matter of constant thought and study and statements upon them are made to Parliament whenever it is thought that the public interest will be served thereby.

Mr. Wyatt: Why is the Prime Minister so secretive about all these matters? Why does he never give the House any information?

Sir T. Moore: Why is the hon. Gentleman so impertinent?

Mr. Wyatt: Why have we to learn what is going on in Indo-China and Geneva from Mr. Dulles and from President Eisenhower's Press conferences? Is it not time that the right hon. Gentleman told the House something, so that we can have an influence on the policy of Her Majesty's Government?

The Prime Minister: I am always glad when it falls to my lot and to my duty to make general statements to the House.

HYDROGEN AND ATOM BOMB TESTS

Mr. A. Henderson: asked the Prime Minister whether information has now been received from the United States Government with regard to the hydrogen test series of explosions which took place during March and April; and whether he will make a statement.

The Prime Minister: I am not prepared as at present advised to give any information beyond that which has appeared in the Press.

Mr. Henderson: In view of the great public concern over the development of


the hydrogen bomb, would the Prime Minister consider proposing that there should be a suspension of all hydrogen tests and explosions pending the outcome of the Disarmament Commission, which began its deliberations this morning?

The Prime Minister: I think we dealt with that at an early stage in the experiments. I have no power to give directions on the subject to the United States or to the Soviet Union.

Mr. Henderson: I did not ask the Prime Minister to give directions. What I asked him was whether he will consider proposing the suspension of these tests?

The Prime Minister: I do not think it would be much use deciding to propose such a course without some consideration of whether it was likely to be adopted or not.

Mr. A. Henderson: asked the Prime Minister how many underwater atomic or hydrogen explosions have been recorded by the scientific instruments at the disposal of Her Majesty's Government; and which of them appear to have been connected with experimental explosions by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

The Prime Minister: The answer to this Question would reveal the degree of efficiency of our apparatus for the detection of atomic explosions and this would not be in the public interest.

SOUTH-EAST ASIA (DEFENCE)

Mr. Bevan: asked the Prime Minister which are the countries with which Her Majesty's Government are having conversations with regard to a security pact for South-East Asia.

Mr. Donnelly: asked the Prime Minister whether he will make a statement regarding the progress of the conversations regarding a South-East Asia security arrangement.

The Prime Minister: I should be very ready to make a statement on this subject, but the situations at Geneva and in Paris are, at the present time, so uncertain that I think it would be better to wait till next Monday. If the right hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member will repeat their Questions then, I will give

them the fullest answers which are possible.

Mr. Follick: In view of the fact that the Portuguese have a colony very near Australia, can the Prime Minister say whether anything can be done about that colony in the conversations that will deal with that area?

The Prime Minister: I should like to make detailed inquiries into these matters before I attempt a public answer.

INDO-CHINA (DIPLOMATIC EXCHANGES)

Mr. Donnelly: asked the Prime Minister whether he will make a statement regarding the consultations which have taken place between Her Majesty's Government and the Government of Burma regarding the future of Indo-China.

The Prime Minister: No, Sir. These diplomatic exchanges are confidential. If this confidence were not respected the exchanges would be seriously impaired.

Mr. Donnelly: Is it not a fact that the attitude of Burma to a proposed alliance on Asia is vitally important? How can the right hon. Gentleman expect this House to make any assessment of the future policy of the Government unless we are in possession of this vital fact?

The Prime Minister: I was speaking about our duty to preserve the confidence of those with whom we have had confidential discussions. It is not our business to make them public to the people of Burma over the heads of the Governments concerned.

Mr. Smithers: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the visit to this country recently of the Burmese Foreign Minister was extremely welcome to the many people who had the opportunity of meeting him?

Mr. Donnelly: asked the Prime Minister what answer Her Majesty's Government has received from the Prime Minister of India in reply to the request for his views on any future guarantees affecting Indo-China.

The Prime Minister: I would refer the hon. Member to the reply given to the hon. Member for Swindon (Mr. T. Reid) on 10th May on this point.

Mr. Donnelly: Will the right hon. Gentleman reconsider the answers he has just given to Questions Nos. 50 and 52 and consult the Governments concerned to see that we have the maximum amount of information available compatible with the ordinary diplomatic confidences?

The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir, I am very anxious that the House should be carried along with the Government in any matters of foreign policy, especially as there is such a large measure of agreement on important issues. I do not think we can begin by loosely and curtly publishing documents which were considered to be private and confidential by the Prime Ministers and the Governments to whom we had addressed them.

Mr. Warbey: As the Government of India have just published the essence of their views on this question, why is Her Majesty's Government suppressing the Indian view? Is it because they do not like the views of India on this matter?

The Prime Minister: Anything the Indian Government have declared publicly is published and might even be read by Members of the House.

Mr. Bevan: The Prime Minister has promised that he will answer Questions Nos. 48 and 51 next Monday. Can we take it for granted that Her Majesty's Government will not commit themselves to any proposal until we in this House have had an opportunity to discuss it?

The Prime Minister: No, Sir. I certainly would not give any such undertaking. The responsibility in these matters always rests with the Government of the day, and the House can do as it likes with them when all the facts are before it.

Mr. Bevan: As there has been prolonged and what one might describe as hesitant negotiations, discussions, consultations and conversations on this matter, ought we not to be allowed to express our views about the outcome before we are faced with a fait accompli?

The Prime Minister: I think a statement can be made on Monday which will say all that there is to say on these difficult matters, which are in a very indeterminate position at the present time.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Mr. Attlee: May I ask the Lord Privy Seal to state the business for next week?

The Lord Privy Seal (Mr. Harry Crookshank): Yes, Sir. The business for next week will be as follows:
MONDAY, 17TH MAY—At the beginning of business my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister will move a Motion for an humble Address to Her Majesty the Queen on her return from her Commonwealth Tour.
Report and Third Reading: Housing (Repairs and Rents) (Scotland) Bill.
TUESDAY, 18TH MAY—Motion to approve: Report from the Business Committee on the Committee stage of the Television Bill, which is a formal proceeding.
Beginning of Committee stage: Finance Bill.
WEDNESDAY, 19TH MAY—Committee stage>: Television Bill (1st allotted day).
Motion relating to: National Service (Adaptation of Enactments) (Navy, Army and Air Force Reserves) Order.
THURSDAY, 20TH MAY—Committee stage: Television Bill (2nd allotted day).
FRIDAY, 21ST MAY—Private Members' Bills.

Mr. Attlee: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether there has been a conversation through the usual channels about a further debate on Members' payments in the near future?

Mr. Crookshank: I think we had better have today's debate before we start talking about other debates.

Mr. Attlee: I thought it was understood that there was to be a debate today at which we shall have merely expressions of opinion, and that a further debate would take place after that, for which arrangements would be made in due course?

Mr. Crookshank: Arrangements can be made in due course, but I hope it is quite clear to the right hon. Gentleman that this is the day which the Government have given for that purpose.

Captain Waterhouse: Has my right hon. Friend's attention been drawn to the third special Report of the Estimates Committee? If so, can he find an opportunity at an early date for the House to discuss the extremely important recommendations set out in the Report?

Mr. Crookshank: I have seen a Motion on the Order Paper, but I do not see any chance of finding any time for a debate.
[That Mr. Yates, Mr. Norman Cole, Mr. Horobin, Mr. W. T. Jones, Mr. J. T. Price, Mr. Tomney and Miss Ward have leave of absence to make inquiries on behalf of the House into certain expenditure in connection with the Office of the United Kingdom High Commissioner in Germany and the Embassies in Paris and Rome.]

Mr. Woodburn: I take it that the announcement of the right hon. Gentleman about Monday's business is a hope, rather than a decision, that it will be all accomplished in one day? The Secretary of State has a large number of Amendments to the Housing (Repairs and Rents) (Scotland) Bill, and it would seem unlikely that the Report stage and Third Reading will be finished in one day.

Mr. Crookshank: I cannot assess the likelihood or unlikelihood of that, but it is certainly not an unreasonable thing to hope will happen.

Mr. Yates: On the question put by the right hon. and gallant Member for Leicester, South-East (Captain Water-house) about the Estimates Committee, the Leader of the House referred to a Motion, but I want to ask him why he cannot find time for the Report itself to be considered, which has implications in regard to how this House can have control over expenditure abroad?

Mr. Crookshank: The hon. Gentleman probably knows that Reports of the Select Committee on Estimates can be discussed on Supply days.

Mr. H. Morrison: The question of my hon. Friend raises a point of principle. This is a Report of a Committee of the House and, as I understand, the issue involved is whether or not, respecting certain foreign embassies as to which there is agreement in the Foreign Office, they can take a Commitee Clerk with

them, without whom they cannot prepare a proper Report. There is disagreement between some authorities and my hon. Friends. This is a sub-committee of the Estimates Committee over which the right hon. and gallant Gentleman presides, and surely it is right that the House of Commons should seek to resolve this point. It would not take very long.

Mr. Crookshank: The only point I was making was that, if the right hon. Gentleman looks at the Standing Orders, he will see that Supply days are available for Supply business, and also for discussion of any Report from the Select Committee which the House might wish to discuss. When the right hon. Gentleman says that there is some dispute between the authorities of this matter, I can assure him that there is no dispute whatsoever.

Mr. Morrison: I know that a Supply day can be used for anything and that the Government are anxious that it should be used, but since this is a report to the House, and there is a difficulty involved which I think the Estimates Committee would like to see resolved, it is not unreasonable that the Government should supply, say, half a day for the discussion of this business?

Miss Ward: Does not my right hon. Friend think it is quite unreasonable to ask the Opposition to give up a Supply day for a discussion of this most important matter, namely, what control the House of Commons has over its own expenditure abroad? It has nothing to do with either the Government or the Opposition; it is a House of Commons matter. Is my right hon. Friend aware that I am extremely surprised at the line he has taken?

Mr. Crookshank: I did not quite hear the final words of my hon. Friend. Did she express surprise? [HON. MEMBERS: "Yes‡"] It is nothing like the surprise I express at her.

Mr. J. Johnson: Can the Leader of the House tell us whether the Government have finally jettisoned the Teachers (Superannuation) Bill? Will he perhaps tell us something about that next week at this time?

Mr. Crookshank: Did the hon. Gentleman say perhaps next week?

Mr. Johnson: Yes, that he might say something about this next week at this time.

Mr. Crookshank: I will say "perhaps" to that.

Mr. Ross: Will the Leader of the House reconsider the point about the Estimates Committee? Will he bear in mind that this is the second time that the Estimates Committee has drawn attention to the need of this House to discuss the matter, and that it is of considerable importance to the House?

Mr. Crookshank: These matters can, of course, be discussed if there is a real desire to discuss them. I was merely pointing out that it is within the power of the Committee of Supply to discuss it on a Supply day, but that does not affect the position that all authorities are quite satisfied that it would be unconstitutional to send abroad any such Committee as an official sub-committee—

Miss Ward: That is not the point.

Mr. Crookshank: That is the point which has been put to me. If the hon. Lady has another point, that is another matter, but all the authorities are agreed that to send abroad a sub-committee of any Committee of this House, formally as such, would be unconstitutional procedure.

Mr. Attlee: But is not the hon. Lady correct in reminding the Lord Privy Seal

that as Leader of the House he is concerned with the privileges and rights of this House as a whole? Quite apart from whether it is Government or Opposition or anything else, this is a very important matter which has been raised by a responsible Committee, as to what are the rights of this House in relation to expenditure. It is one of our oldest privileges. Surely it is right that time should be given for discussion.

Hon. Members: Answer.

Mr. Crookshank: I really have not anything more to say. I said that these matters could be discussed if the House really felt it wanted them debated. I merely said that it would be rather a fruitless debate when all authorities who can have any information on this matter take the view that such action is unconstitutional.

Mr. Summers: In relation to the Motion for which my right hon. Friend said it might be difficult to find time, would he make inquiries through the usual channels, because it might be found that it was not a controversial matter and could be taken in an extremely short time, which would give what the Estimates Committee wants and not take up the time of the House?

Mr. Crookshank: I note that, but a debate which takes up no time would be unusual.

MEMBERS' EXPENSES

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Mr. Buchan-Hepburn.]

3.39 p.m.

Mr. R. J. Mellish: I desire to call the attention of the House to the Report of the Select Committee on Members' Expenses, which was published on 2nd February of this year. I think it right at the beginning of my speech to remind the House of the terms of reference, which were:
to consider and report upon the extent to which the Members' Fund fulfils, under present conditions, the purposes for which it was set up, and upon the nature and extent of the expenditure incurred by Members of this House in the performance of their duties and also upon the practice of Commonwealth and Foreign Parliaments for meeting comparable expenditure incurred by their Members in this field.
I am sure that I am expressing the feelings of the whole House when I say to the right hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. C. Davies) how grateful we are to him as Chairman of the Select Committee and to all his colleagues for doing a very difficult job extremely well and with very great efficiency. We note with very great pleasure that the Report which they issued on this very difficult matter of Members' expenses was a unanimous Report, and for that we are very much obliged.
I am sure that the House will bear with me in the difficult task that lies ahead of me for the next 20 minutes or so. My job is to refer to a matter which is personal to us all. When I knew that I was to open this debate, I did some research. I found that of the three major debates that have taken place on this subject, the first, in 1911, was initiated by Mr. David Lloyd George, the second, in 1937, by Mr. Neville Chamberlain, and the third, in 1946, by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Dalton). This knowledge is not very helpful to me.
I ask the House to bear with me because this is a House of Commons matter. It is not a party matter. It concerns every one of us in one way or another. At the start, I assure every hon. Member that I do not want to say anything that is offensive to anyone, and that

I do not want to introduce a partisan note into my speech. I hope that in that respect others who take part in the debate will follow my example.
The first part of the Report concerns the Members' Fund. As a Member who is young in years, I am not one who will benefit from the recommendations contained in paragraph 38 (c) of the Committee's Report. The Committee recommends that service below the age of 40 ought not to be reckoned for pension and that no Member should qualify unless he has at least 10 years' service beyond the age of 45. I am 41 and I have been a Member of this House for the past eight years. If this part of the Report were to be accepted, I should lose seven years' membership and only my last year's service would qualify, but I would willingly sacrifice that if I felt that the adoption of this part of the Report would bring benefit to some of the older Members of this House.
It is surely a scandal that there are hon. Members who have given the best years of the latter part of their lives to the service of the House and who probably sacrificed pension rights when they came here but who, when they leave this House because of ill-health or because of the fortunes of a General Election or the action of a Boundary Commission, have to prove what is tantamount to abject poverty before they can apply for benefit from the Fund. I say, very modestly, that I am sorry that the Prime Minister is not here, because I feel that I could appeal to him in this matter. He is perhaps our greatest House of Commons man. He loves this House and all that it means and all its traditions. Whether one differs from him politically or not, one acknowledges that fact. He must be grieved to think that some hon. Members are in this plight. I hope very much that he will use his important influence in this matter.
I say to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the House as a whole that if we dismiss this part of the Report and say that we shall not deal with the Members' Fund, the problem will come back again and again until it is finally resolved. I am glad that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour is here. I am sure that he would agree, and that all parties would say, that it is right and proper that industry should


provide good pension rights to employees. I know that the Parliamentary Secretary and the Minister of Labour would do all that they could to encourage that trend in industry, but what a poor example we set in this House in dealing with the problem of older Members when we make certain that they are in abject poverty before they can apply for a grant from the Members' Fund. As a young Member who cannot hope to benefit from this part of the Report at this stage, and in fact would lose by it, I welcome the recommendation very much. I hope that we shall not adopt the attitude that this is not very important. It is important, and the least that we can do is to support our older Members.
The next part of the Report relates to expenses that are paid to Members. It can be rightly said that this Report was a best-seller when it was published. There can be very few Members who have not read it. I say quite frankly that Roger Bannister had nothing on me when it came to obtaining a copy of this Report, because I was so anxious to know what it had done and why. The Report has had a great deal of Press publicity. That is as it should be, because this is a matter that concerns the country as much as it concerns us. In addition, the Report has been mentioned on the radio and on television, and there can hardly be a man or woman in this country who is not informed on the subject.
As to Press reaction, I shall not quarrel with any part of the Press. It has every right to say what it likes. A free Press is one of the essentials of democracy. We have a free Press at liberty to say whatever it wants. Some parts of the Press thought that the Report was very good indeed and that it was high time that what it recommended was carried out. Other parts of the Press did not think very much of it. It thought that these were very poor recommendations.
In spite of the enormous publicity given to this Report, I, and I understand the vast majority of hon. Members, never received a single letter from a constituent expressing an opinion one way or the other. I was told that one hon. Member had received a large postbag on the subject. I approached him and he told me that his total postbag was three, one in favour and two against. Perhaps

that would be a large postbag in comparison with what other hon. Members received. I also attended some public meetings, two of which were of the "Any Questions" type, and I was not asked a single question on the subject. I want to be perfectly fair on this matter, but 1 do make the point that it is usual, when there is great disagreement over a subject among the public, to find it reflected in our postbags.
After the publication of the Report, I took it upon myself to discuss it with many hon. Members on both sides of the House. I propose to deal with what I regard as the four major objections to the Report that I have heard. The first, made by some hon. Members, was that we should not have had a Committee composed of our fellow Members to make these proposals and that the job should have been done by an outside body. Speaking purely for myself, I would have preferred it to have gone to an outside body. The Members of the Select Committee had a very difficult task. Speaking as a trade unionist, and one familiar with trade union negotiations since the age of 14, I feel that one of the things that would have impressed an outside body when considering this matter would have been that part of the terms of reference relating to the practice of Commonwealth and foreign Parliaments. What I think would have impressed an outside body is what is paid to members of other Parliaments.
Comparing like with like, as I think any outside body would have done, and certainly as is done in the trade union movement in trying to arrive at a fair rate for the job, I am convinced that an outside body would have recommended very much higher expenses payments to hon. Members than have been suggested by our Committee. That is only a personal opinion and I may be wrong, but I would remind the House that even if we had had an outside body discussing this matter and coming to conclusions, its report would have come back for consideration on the Floor of this House. We would still have had this debate on the report of an outside committee because, as the Keeper of the Queen's Purse, we would have had to decide whether extra money should be paid to hon. Members for expenses.
The second point is that this is a matter which should not be decided now but should be deferred until after the next General Election. It is said that this Government and this House have no mandate and, therefore, should not implement any increase for hon. Members until the electorate has had a chance of discussing the matter and expressing its views. I can quite understand hon. Members saying that, and I want to call in aid the words of Mr. Neville Chamberlain, when he was Prime Minister in 1937. I shall not bore the House with a long quotation. He was introducing a Motion to increase hon. Members' expenses payments from £400 to £600. At that time there was an Amendment which asked that the matter should be deferred until after the next General Election. I think the House would agree that Mr. Chamberlain's words are pertinent today. He said:
… I notice on the Order Paper an Amendment the effect of which would be to postpone the operation of the increased salary until after another General Election. I perfectly understand the feelings which have prompted some of my hon. and right hon. Friends to put their names to an Amendment of that kind, but I am bound to say that I cannot myself see why, if it is right to alter the salary from £400 to £600 because £400 is not enough, it is not right to do it now rather than wait for another two or three years. There is another consideration. Is it really advisable that an issue of this kind, so readily open to misrepresentation, so difficult to consider in a judicial atmosphere, as it ought to be considered, should be decided in the hurly-burly of a General Election?"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 22nd June. 1937; Vol. 325, c. 1052–53.]
The late Mr. Neville Chamberlain, in a very fine speech, dismissed the Amendment, which was put to the vote and heavily defeated.
I think it would be unwise to defer this until after a General Election. In my constituency I understand that at the next General Election I shall have a Liberal and a Conservative opponent. We may well all three agree in our election manifestos to advocate an increase in the payment for Members' expenses. Will the House tell me how the electors of a constituency like mine are supposed to vote when the three candidates all say the same thing? I cannot believe that the people of this country would vote for Brown or Smith merely because he offered his services more cheaply.
Those who advocate that the matter should be left to the electorate do a great injustice to our people. They belittle the intelligence of our people. Our people are an adult people and they understand matters, and at a General Election they expect to be asked to vote on the major issues and the big differences between the great parties. I therefore hope that the suggestion that the matter be deferred until after a General Election will be opposed.
The next point which has been made, and which is important, is that we ought to alter the method of conducting our business in this House before we talk of increasing the payment for expenses. This afternoon we are very much like the members of the Select Committee, as our job is to talk about what we are doing now, not about what may be done tomorrow. It may be that a future Government may decide to set up a Select Committee to consider the way in which the House should conduct its business. The argument may be that there should be many more people doing part-time work. I do not want to quarrel with those who feel that the business of the House should be part-time, but that question is a matter for a future committee to consider, and not a matter on which this Select Committee was asked to express an opinion.
On the question of part-time employment, I would point out that we are a broad section of the community. For example, we have miners here. If there are to be facilities for part-time work for all hon. Members, is the Minister of Works to do something about making a coalmine in Parliament Square? We might have some pithead baths behind Mr. Speaker's Chair. The suggestion is as ludicrous as that. How can one expect a middle-aged miner, who has come into the House on the expression of good will of his people, to follow that employment part-time? The truth is that this House to a very large extent will have to rely on many who in fact give their full time to the House. I am not anxious to get involved in that argument, but that is my personal opinion. It may be that a committee of the future will show how part-time could be done, but we should leave it to that committee and not get bogged down on that question when considering what we should do today.
The last point of substance which I have heard—and it is the biggest point of all—is the question of outside claims; that is to say, that there are certain sections of the community who have a greater claim on the sympathy of this House than can be claimed for ourselves. I come straight to the point because, whatever faults I have, I hope that I do not lack courage. There are the old-age pensioners. I made a speech in this House a few weeks ago in which I said that something should be done for them. I believe that something has to be done for them in the very near future, because their plight is very difficult.
But in every one of these debates—in 1911, in 1937 and in 1946—the same argument was applied: that there were people outside who had a claim to our support and sympathy. Taken to its logical conclusion, that argument would mean that no hon. Member ought to have an increase in his expenses payment until all those outside claims have been met. The answer would be that for payment of hon. Members' expenses no time is the right time.
Again, to take it to its logical conclusion, the trade union movement would have no right to make claims on behalf of its members for increased wages and we would have no right to give judges an increase, no right to apply the Danckwerts award to the doctors or to give retired Army officers an increase. If this House did not give any increase to Members on the basis that people ouside ought to get something, I do not believe that would give any satisfaction to those people.
I cannot believe that any old-age pensioner in my constituency would go to bed tonight feeling happier because his Member of Parliament had not got an increase for expenses. I believe that each and every case has to be argued on its merits. If there were legislation in this House for an increase for the old-age pensioners, there is no hon. Member who would not vote for that, as all of us hope that their claims will be met speedily and soon. But that does not deny the fact that a case has been made for an increase for hon. Members.
Recently we have read in the Press that the Chancellor may suggest a payment to hon. Members for lodgings, that

is to say, for the hotel expenses of hon. Members who, in order to do their Parliamentary business, have to stay at hotels. Let me say this to my hon. Friends who may well benefit from such a suggestion. I am a London Member. I am married and have four children. I will admit freely that were I in the position of some of my hon. Friends who represent provincial constituencies, and had, in addition to my present expenses, to bear the cost of staying at an hotel four nights a week, I should give notice that I would not be standing as a candidate at the next General Election. I beg the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Government not to introduce any scheme which would have the effect of discriminating between hon. Members, and I will give my reasons.
I have referred to my own position. It may well be that, although they come to London and have to stay for four nights a week in an hotel, some of my hon. Friends who represent provincial constituencies may be married but have no children. At the end of the week they would be a little better off—not very much—than, say, myself as a London Member.
Then there is the case of other hon. Members representing provincial constituencies who live in London. When I use the word "provincial," I am also, of course, referring to constituencies North of the Border. Those hon. Members cannot afford the expense of keeping two homes; but when they go to their constituencies, as they do regularly, they have to pay hotel expenses, which is also an added burden. I can assure the Chancellor of the Exchequer that by introducing any scheme which would discriminate between one hon. Member and another he would create a great deal of regret and resentment in this House. I understand that the purpose of this debate is to enable the right hon. Gentleman to "collect the voices" and I hope that he will recognise the importance of the point I have just made.
I now wish to refer to the Parliamentary Secretaries, and I call in aid the words of the Leader of the House—I am sorry he has left the Chamber—in a speech in 1946. I have made a number of rough speeches in this House and the right hon. Gentleman, too, has contributed his share, but this speech of his was a good


one. Speaking of junior Ministers, the right hon. Gentleman said:
I do not know if it is a matter of general knowledge, but anyhow hon. Gentlemen can take it from some of us who know about these things that there have been, in the course of years, a number of occasions when hon. Members of this House have been proposed by their leaders for office in junior ranks, and found1 themselves unable to accept because they were either professionally engaged or engaged in business, and at the time were perhaps paying for the education of their children, or looking after somebody, or had some family responsibilities. Because of the fact that they would have to take office"—
and here the right hon. Gentleman gave figures—
and give up all other sources of income, they were unable to contemplate the change."— [OFFICIAL REPORT, 29th May, 1946; Vol. 423, c. 1300–1.]
The right hon. Gentleman said that in 1946, and it is equally true today. I think that it ought to be put on record that hon. Gentlemen who accept office make tremendous sacrifices. We ought not to be ashamed of saying it. They have made quite considerable sacrifices, but evidently this House does not recognise that fact too well, and I think that something ought to be done for them.
I do not know the position of Her Majesty's Government in the matter, but I think it would be fair to assume that they may well have difficulty in getting what they regard as their most able men to do the most important work. I was a Parliamentary private secretary to three Ministers in the Labour Government and I know something of the work which falls upon both junior and senior Ministers. It is a full-time job. Having said all those nice things about Parliamentary Secretaries, may I hope that in future I shall obtain from some of them better replies to my letters?
As we all know, the work of a Member of Parliament is not confined to this House. I wish that the Press would be a little more considerate about that, and, on occasions when it has the space to do so, would tell the people in the country that our work is not confined to this House. For most of us the end of the Parliamentary week means the start of our real work outside. When we get what have been described in the Press as the long Recesses—newspapers have a right to describe them as long Recesses— for many of us it means very long and

arduous periods of duty in our constituencies, attending meetings and so on, and doing the work which we could not do while Parliament was sitting. There are not many hon. Members who, for example, can spend the Summer Recess on the south coast of France having a wonderful time. Since I have been a Member of Parliament, a trip to Margate has been as much as I could hope for. These things have all to be said and the position made perfectly clear.
To strike a serious note, one thing about the job of a Member of Parliament which is not often realised is the tremendous sacrifice made so far as family life is concerned. It may be said, "All right, you took the job and you have to put up with it." We all knew the position when we accepted office, but we did so because of our desire to serve the people of this country in what we considered to be the best possible way. However, there is no harm in mentioning that great sacrifices are made by hon. Members in that regard.
When the hurly-burly of the General Election is over and we are returned to this House, we represent all our constituents. We do not discriminate between the people who seek our assistance; we do not ask them what are their politics or their religion. We all know that what might be termed our "case work" has grown tremendously. It may be argued that it is wrong for a Member of Parliament to act as a welfare officer, but for my part I am honoured and glad if I can be of service to ordinary people. I like to think that one great thing about our job is that at times we have the key to open a door which might otherwise be barred to ordinary people. None of us objects to this part of our work; indeed we are glad and anxious to do it.
I wish to pay a tribute to some hon. Members of this House with whom I discussed the Report and who happen to have private incomes, so that they will not be greatly affected. I was impressed by the fact that the majority of them are for this Report one hundred per cent. Their attitude is, "While it will not benefit me particularly, if some of my colleagues are in difficulty—and this Select Committee Report has shown that they are—something should be done for them." I wish to express my thanks to those hon. Members.
There is one other point I wish to make, and in doing so I quote the words of Mr. David Lloyd George, as he then was, who, when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1911, introduced the payment of £400 to Members of Parliament. He said:
When we offer £400 a year as payment to Members of Parliament it is not a recognition of the magnitude of the service, it is not a remuneration, it is not a recompense, it is not even a salary. It is just an allowance, and I think the minimum allowance, to enable men to come here, men who would render incalculable service to the State, and whom it is an incalculable loss to the State not to have here, but who cannot be here because their means do not allow it. It is purely an allowance to enable us to open the door to great and honourable public service to these men, for whom this country will be all the richer, all the greater, and all the stronger for the unknown vicissitudes which it has to face by having here to aid us by their counsel, by their courage, and by their resource."— [OFFICIAL REPORT, 10th August, 19–11; Vol. XXIX, c. 1383.]
I believe that those words were right then, and they are right today. Not one of us here is asking for payment for expenses which would mean that people outside would wish to become Members of Parliament merely because the salary was attractive. That is not what we want.
We set up a Select Committee because many of us were convinced that the expenses which we were getting to do the job for which we had been elected were not enough. The Government generously set up that Committee. The Committee did a fine job of work. It gave a lot of attention to the matter, it had a great number of meetings, and it came to conclusions which are in print for the whole of Britain to see. I believe that we should be lacking courage if we did not admit, frankly, freely and honestly, and tell all our people, that this Report is an honest and honourable Report, and we should not hesitate to apply its implications.

4.11 p.m.

Mr. W. F. Deedes: I am sure that whether or not we agree in detail with all that the hon. Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish) said, the whole House will be grateful to him for the very fair and temperate manner, and the very entertaining manner, in which he presented the case. He has been very fair indeed, and I shall try at least to follow him in that respect.
The hon. Member said this was not a party matter, and I think that is right. I believe that we shall find in the course of the debate that there is not so much a division of political opinion as a diversity of personal opinion. That was the case in 1911, when this issue was first debated as a matter of principle, and it was the case in 1937, when the increment was agreed.
Since this is a matter of personal opinion, and since personal opinion is inseparable from personal circumstances, I think it is a proper preliminary to declare my interest; and, as one of the professional journalists in the House, I think it is right to admit that among those in the House who seek to combine Parliamentary and professional work, the journalist may be counted among the more fortunate. It is very easy to declare, as a matter of principle, that all back benchers should have interests outside the House, if one happens to be fortunate enough to be able to pursue them; but I most certainly do not say that, nor do I imply it, as a universal rule.
It seems to me that it is healthy that there should be a number of hon. Members here with outside interests, but it is not necessary, nor even desirable, that all should have outside interests. I take the point which the hon. Member for Bermondsey made about the reliance which we put on those Members who can give the whole of their time to the service of this House, particularly in morning Committees, with which we are all acquainted. I am always sorry to hear, and I emphatically reject, the line of those people who say that it is up to Members who come to this place to fend for themselves and provide for themselves or get out. I reject that, and I think I speak for the majority of the House in doing so.
Most of this question centres around those who are wholly, or almost wholly, dependent upon their Parliamentary salaries, and whether or not that salary is adequate to meet their requirements and the proper execution of their duty. The second factor which bears very heavily upon our outlook—and whatever any of us may say, it does bear upon our outlook—is public opinion outside the House. It is much better to be frank about this. After all, public opinion is our business. We are all sensitive to it, whatever we may say in the House. If


we were not sensitive to it, we should not be here.
It is fair to say that if public opinion has not taken an unfavourable attitude to the Report of the Select Committee, it has perhaps taken a less favourable attitude than some hoped before and after the Select Committee reported. It is very difficult to weigh accurately the weight of public opinion on this matter. Certainly there are no party lines. The hon. Member was quite right; I think my own experience is that letters on the subject passing between Members and their constituents have been very few and references to it at public meetings have again been very few.
Nevertheless, I think there is a deep feeling in many quarters which may be expressed in these words, "M.P.S ought not to vote themselves more money." I put it in that sentence. I think it is an expression of public opinion. I do not seek to exaggerate it, but it is there, it is in all our constituencies, and in my opinion it should be respected.
I would go further. I think that if we are concerned, as indeed we all are concerned, with the prestige of this place, we should think not only in terms of whether we may become personally vulnerable but whether we may become collectively less well thought of. That is where public opinion in this matter weighs, and weighs heavily. I confess that this consideration has made it difficult for me, at any rate, to reach a cool judgment on this issue, and I confess that that is why I should be very sorry to see steps taken without a greater effort to win public understanding—to win greater public understanding than there is now—of the problems which are before us.
I am most reluctant to criticise any part of the Report for which the right hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. C. Davies) and his colleagues were responsible. They had a most difficult job—a job which very few of us would have liked to undertake; and I think they produced a very good Report. In any case, it is easy to be wise after the event. But looking back over the rivers of ink which have been spilled since that Report appeared, I am bound to say that I have one regret. This will not meet with the agreement

of all hon. Members, but I will explain why I say it. I regret that the figure of £1,500 was mentioned in that Report, and I will explain exactly why.
There were two figures, to my thinking, of significance in the Report. One was that the average expenses of a Member of Parliament today are £750 a year. The other figure was the recommendation for £1,500 a year. In these matters, the public mind very often has room for only one idea, for one figure; and it is the figure of £1,500 and not the figure of £750 which has become, I think, unfortunately, the talking point in this country. The figure of £750 has been largely ignored and the discussions which I have heard and the discussions which I have seen in the public Press—

Mr. Spencer Summers: Would not my hon. Friend agree that this figure of £750 would never have arisen had it not been that large numbers of Members had the means to spend more than their salary so as to enable that average of £750 to be spent?

Mr. Deedes: I think that my hon. Friend has a point there, but I do not want to leave the point I am on now, because I go from what I have said to this: the conclusions which led the Select Committee to that figure, and that figure in itself, were to my way of thinking the new and significant features of their Report. They are the features which I think should have been stressed, and which deserve to be stressed, more than they have been stressed. I think we would have found ourselves in less difficulty today had public opinion been focused on that point. We would have been more likely to have aroused a sympathetic echo outside this place to the suggestion which has been made that something should be done.
It is that figure of £750 which I should like to see squarely laid before the bar of public opinion, because there is a certain amount of hypocrisy about considering that figure, there is a certain amount of dodging. I, of course, respect public opinion in what it has said, but let me add this: public opinion has not faced the situation created by that figure and by the Report of the Select Committee upon it. It has not had to do so. It has contented itself with the much simpler task of arguing the merits or demerits of giving a Member of Parliament more or less, £1,500 a year.
Let me say one word more about this problem of £750 as the average expenses of Members. It is a genuine figure as the Select Committee said and as we all know within our personal experience. How has his figure arisen? I believe that it has arisen—and I see no reason why we should sing small about this— because of the amount of work which has now become inseparable from the duties of a Member of Parliament. The halcyon days when this was a club and was treated as a club, when appearances—as the old Division lists show—were usually infrequent and needed to be only infrequent, when a Member, by paying £1,000 a year to his constituency, could get away with one visit there each year —those halcyon days have gone. It is a good thing, too. Just before this debate I was handed a note about a silver porringer in the collection of the plate of a certain borough, which bore this inscription:
Presented by Colonel H—, having represented this borough for 25 years in Parliament, and amassed a great fortune.
I think that speaks for itself, but happily those days have gone. To my way of thinking, there is nothing to be ashamed of in the fact that they have gone. It is nothing which one should regret, least of all the electorate.
The growth, during wartime and in the aftermath, of Government Departments and the dependence of individuals upon them, has opened up, as the hon. Gentleman opposite said, a vast new field of duties for Members of Parliament. I do not like, any more than he does, the term "welfare officer." It is a false term. It is true that a Member of Parliament acts as a liaison between his constituents and Government Departments, and also as a lubricant between his constituents and the very heavy machinery of government. None of us should grudge those duties, the toil which they involve or the toll which they may take of our health. We enjoy doing them, or we should not be here, but the public should not expect the cost of those duties to fall wholly and solely upon Members of Parliament.
The issue is not whether or not Members of Parliament are worth £1,000 or £1,500 more or less. It is not for us to decide what our true worth is now, before or after a General Election. The issue is whether the cost of this profession, as it has now become, should be borne wholly

by Members of Parliament or not, and, if not, whether legitimate expenses should be reimbursed. I can almost hear a voice saying, "Oh, but there are Income Tax allowances." Let us face the point. Let us take a Member of Parliament who receives £1,000 a year, all tax-free; very few of us do, but there may be one or two. Deduct £600—not £750—as the cost of incidental expenses, and the Member is left with—I think it is better to refer to it in terms of pounds per week—the sum of £8 per week. Would anyone argue that that is an adequate salary for a representative in this House?
Of course, there is a certain sensitiveness about expenses. I notice that the point was made by the Select Committee that there should be no privileges for this or any other profession in respect of expenses, but having said that, it is surely not right that this profession should be denied the rights in respect of expenses which other professions enjoy? If I may take one single example in respect of subsistence, there is, in fact, no civil servant, no professional man, no trade unionist for whom it is not proper to charge expenses when he is living away from home on duties incurred in connection with his business.
There will be much argument about what legitimate expenses should be, how they may be incurred, what they should be and into which category they should go. I have no desire to shirk that matter of detail, but, on the other hand, I hope we shall not become involved today in a welter of detail as to exactly how this should be worked out. In this preliminary discussion, I hope we shall not get ourselves bogged down in a welter of Income Tax and expenses law. I have no idea whether it is best to do it individually, collectively or by means of geographical categories, but I do not want to enter into that, because I am anxious that we do not miss the wood for the trees.
It is surely not beyond the wit of man to devise a formula here which is not only just, but which is seen to be just by people outside this House. I hope I may add this. If a formula is discovered, I hope it will be a formula to which all hon. Members will feel they can subscribe, because it would be most damaging to this place if it were to lead to some hon. Members to strike attitudes—no


doubt with the most honourable intentions—or to make themselves different from the rest. That would be invidious and unfortunate, and we should seek to avoid it.
May I add a word or two to what was said by the hon. Gentleman opposite in respect of Ministers, and not only junior Ministers, but Cabinet Ministers as well? I hope that they will be treated with the rest in anything which may be done. It is an absolutely indefensible assumption that Ministers are privileged. They have not got the private means which many of them had in days gone by, and in this field the electors of this country get government on the cheap, and they have done so for a very considerable time.
Mr. Gladstone, who in this matter of public money was the soul of honour, received for the greater part of his career one salary and a half; that is, £7,500 a year, which, by current values, amounted to about £30,000. I am not saying that he did not earn it, but my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer draws—and indeed, the first Chancellor of the Exchequer drew— £4,000. After tax is deducted—Surtax and Income Tax—we must subtract the cost of his Parliamentary duties in excess of the £500 which he receives in respect of his Parliamentary salary—which is a maximum of £500. In respect of Parliamentary Secretaries, the same figure applies. [Interruption.]I stand corrected. My right hon. Friend does not even get half his Parliamentary salary as the junior Ministers do. That is absolutely wrong, and quite indefensible. It should be remedied.
I say that, as matters stand, there is hardship here on both sides. I happened to be here in 1937, in a different capacity, when this matter was first discussed. I remember the discussions that took place then, when there was hardship, and how it was remedied. There was hardship in 1937 not only because of the value of the £ and the increased cost of living, but there was hardship principally because then, already, there had begun a fundamental—one might almost say historic— change in the role of a Member of Parliament. The role of a Member of Parliament, from being a sinecure, if they chose to make it so, had become a job of work

without the option, and that process has continued with the years quite relentlessly. Is anybody going to argue that it is now less honourable, less worthy or less dignified than it was before.
I think it is right—and the hon. Gentleman opposite made a point if this—that we should be prepared to make sacrifices in many fields—in time, leisure, family life, recreations, holidays and even professions—all these things—and even to take risks. I must confess that I do not accept what the Select Committee recommended in respect of pensions, but those sacrifices should not entail penury, for two reasons. The first is because for the family man that penury is not a simple, personal sacrifice; it may bear very harshly on what is naturally every father's dearest wish. Secondly, it is detrimental to the efficient conduct of our duties if we are subject to penury and the anxiety which is inseparable from it.
To conclude, I am painfully aware that it is not difficult to stand here and deliver generalisations on this subject. The task of the Government is much harder, and it is fair to remind hon. Gentlemen opposite that it is the Government who will have to reach the final decision on this matter and who will be ultimately responsible. Those who say that there is no politics in this matter—not necessarily in respect of today's debate only—are deluding themselves. Inevitably, this subject is inseparable from politics. Whatever the solution, this is combustible material, and I should like to be as blunt as was the hon. Gentleman opposite. It is combustible material because we on this side of the House have not done the things which hon. Gentlemen opposite asked us to do. It is as well to face that, and not to delude ourselves by thinking that the circumstances are different.
It is the Government who have the rough end of the stick and the Chancellor of the Exchequer who will have to face it. I am not making heavy weather about it, but it is right gently to remind hon. Gentlemen opposite that it is so. If the Government care to take action they may well get the gratitude of the Opposition but they will not increase the gratitude of the electors towards them. For a Government with a majority of this kind, it would be a quixotic act. That has to be acknowledged.
The Government have to consider, however, not only their own health but the


health of this assembly. We are living in an iconoclastic age. If the Government decide to take action they will have need of all the help they can get from hon. Members opposite, not only now but afterwards, and both inside and outside this House as well. That will be the test, the acid test, of one of those arts of government which we have for so long taught the world to apply and which we must now teach some of the people of this country more sympathetically to understand.

4.32 p.m.

Mr.. Frank Bowles: We have had two first-class speeches. I hope that nothing I say will in any way lower the tone of the debate, which may in due course turn out to show the House of Commons at its best.
I agree with the hon. Member for Ashford (Mr. Deedes) that it is very difficult indeed to weigh public opinion. Nobody can pretend to do so, and that is why we have General Elections.] have been very surprised at the attitude of some Conservative friends of mine on this subject. Some of them immediately said, "I thoroughly agree with the proposed pensions scheme." I do not propose to speak for too long, but I would give examples that I have come across in my capacity as trustee of the Members' Fund and to give some idea of the results of the poverty of hon. Members.
First I would quote what the Prime Minister said in a statement to this House:
There is no doubt … that a number of hon. Members are oppressed by serious difficulties because heavy and necessary expenses absorb so much of the Parliamentary salary.'—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 14th April, 1954; Vol. 526, c. 1151.]
In saying that, the Prime Minister has given us the case as to the poverty of some hon. Members, although there are other hon. Members who do not alter their standard of life because they are here. If any hon. Member in this House is in that unfortunate and oppressed situation through no fault of his own-not through gambling or any of the vices which might cause him to be in a state of depression—the position is made out, and it is very serious indeed.
From conversations that I have had with hon. Members, I know that the figure of £5 which the Select Committee

gave as the average that hon. Members had at the end of their week is a good deal too high. It is nothing like that. A large number of Members, as has already been admitted, are in that position. The Select Committee did not dare to publish some of the examples that it came across. It thought the public would not believe the poverty of some hon. Members of this House. I happen to know that a disquieting number of hon. Members on both sides are "subbing" against their next month's salary. That is a shocking situation, and there is no question but that it is true.
There are other hon. Members, and I am one of them, who have been lucky and are lucky now in their financial situation. Some have been lucky or clever in the choice of their parents, others have been lucky or more clever in the choice of wealthy wives. Good luck to them. I am making an appeal to them. I do not say that any of them have taken a difficult attitude on this question, but there is a feeling about that some of those hon. Members oppose the recommendation of the Select Committee which was presided over by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Montgomery (Mr. C. Davies). Let them never forget their luck by birth, marriage or in some other way. Let them acknowledge their luck when they are considering the poverty, difficulty and financial oppression of Parliamentary duties experienced by some of their colleagues in this place.
This Mother of Parliaments may very well be the most influential Parliament in the world, but it must be able to work properly. One of the things about which I think everybody agrees is that it must have a good Opposition. There are probably more hon. Members in the Labour Party who are wholly dependent upon their incomes from this House than there are on the Government side. I remember thinking that, as a leading article in "The Times" said, if there should be an increase in Members' salaries it would make hon. Members a little more dependent on the Whips. My experience in the Select Committee is that the greater the poverty of a Member of Parliament the greater is his dependence upon the Whips.

Mr. Robson Brown: Absolutely correct.

Mr. Bowles: I am glad to get that support. I am sure there must be social and sometimes financial pressure upon hon. Members on the Government side. Hon. Members on that side of the House may feel: "We must be very careful how we behave in this matter. We may damage the party, or we may lose our seats." I have seen hon. Members jump to attention at that, because that is a most natural fear.
The hon. Member for Ashford pointed out that Members who are married and have children are not standing just on their own legs. They have a responsibility to wives and children. People who are Members of Parliament sometimes take on greater financial responsibility. They come to London and perhaps send their children to more expensive schools than they otherwise would have done. They become more dependent than otherwise upon the support of the Whips.
We cannot help it. Those are the facts of life. The longer I remain in this House the less I understand the workings, not of procedure, but of conscience and matters of that kind. Sometimes a Member is asked: "Are you standing at the next Election?" How often the answer is: "I cannot afford to retire." That is a consequence of people being too poor to retire. This place has become a prison for Members like that. They have to stay here, whether they are ill or not, because they cannot afford to retire. The alternative is National Assistance. That is my experience. One hon. Member said that people know what they are in for when they stand for election, but the fact is that the cost of living has increased considerably, and £1,000 in 1946 is now worth £1,500. Therefore, hon. Members will be even less able to retire in 1955—or whenever the next Election is—than they would have been in 1950.
I am very honoured to be a trustee of the Members' Fund, and there one really does see the truth of the situation. I see the right hon. Member for Epsom (Mr. McCorquodale) nodding his assent. His hon. and gallant Friend the Member for East Grinstead (Colonel Clarke), the right hon. and learned Member for Montgomery, my hon. Friend the Member for Willesden, West (Mr. Viant), the chief Whip and myself, at our monthly meetings, have dealt with the sad plight of former Members of this House, who were

highly respected and many of whom had been here for years. They have disappeared from the scene, or they have died. We get a tremendous number of these cases to deal with at each meeting, and no hon. Member who has not had the privilege to serve on that Committee has any idea of the terrible situation facing these people.
I think there is no doubt that hon. Members on this side of the House are worse off when they retire than hon. Members opposite. At least, that is the situation at the moment. Perhaps the next Labour Government will put that right. The present position is quite shocking. The information that we get at our monthly meetings about ex-Members or their widows is confidential. We have to apply an annual means test. Mr. Moyes, the Accountant of this House, who is also the Secretary of the Members' Fund Committee, has to ask former Members or their widows every year to fill in questionnaires and say what money they have, how much they have in the Post Office and in National Savings, the value of their house and so on.
Yesterday we had a case—I must not mention names—of a person who had been drawing £89 in National Assistance, and that was stopped last month. He came to us to see whether we could supplement that loss in his income. All that we are entitled to do under the Act which this House passed is to give him £60, so that that person's income has been reduced by £29 because, in a sense, he has come off National Assistance.
We had another case of a former Member of this House—he was a Member for many years—who had made an alteration in his shareholding and he was receiving £30 more a year. The result was that we had to reduce what he was getting because he had been financially clever on the Stock Exchange. If the result of his investment had been the other way, we should have had to give him more. In other words, we are also underwriting the speculation on the Stock Exchange of poor ex-Members of this House. They are certainly poor, or they would not come to us.
In the deliberations of the Select Committee, Mr. Moyes was asked this question by my hon. Friend the Member for Willesden, East (Mr. Orbach):
I do not know whether I can ask this, Mr. Chairman, but would it be right to say


that Members of the Committee and you yourself, Mr. Moyes, find it is a little distasteful?—Well, I do not think so. I think we find it more harrowing.
I think I used the word "shocking," but there is no doubt that emotionally the feeling of sadness is quite deep.
I have referred to the devaluation of the £ and I have said that £1,500 now is worth £1,000 a year or two ago. In 1911 the salary was £400 a year. I beg the Chancellor to compare present-day taxation with taxation in 1911, when the salary was £400 a year. A salary of £400 in 1911 is worth about £1,495 today. But it was a great deal more valuable, because in giving these comparable figures I have not taken taxation into account.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ber-mondsey (Mr. Mellish) referred to the question that is asked: "Why cannot Members take part-time work?" Of course they cannot. He also commented that it is silly to talk about having coalmines in New Palace Yard, and so on. Take the case of a train driver. He cannot drive a train for two days a week. He has to do it for 50 weeks a year.
There have been letters and leading articles in "The Times" on this subject, and if the public do not understand the situation, I still blame the newspapers, because I think that if two clever people on "The Times," the editor and the writer of these articles—whether they are two different people or the same person, it does not matter—do not understand the recommendations or if they wilfully distort them, how can the public understand, and how can we weigh public opinion if the public are misled by a responsible newspaper like "The Times"?
We are doing here most responsible work, and it is a public service. There was the suggestion in "The Times" that if the job were made too attractive, people would try to make a career of it. I do not know what is meant by that. Who, when he gets a job worth £1,000 a year in ordinary life, expects to have to pay a third of it away for a secretary, or alternatively has to do all his writing in his own hand and keep no carbon copies? A third of one's salary is immediately spent in that way. Also, there is postage and so on. All these matters are well known. As I have said, the Committee stated that only £5 a week was left to many Members from their

salaries, but I know that there are many cases much worse than that and that the Committee dare not publish those cases.

Mr. Aneurin Bevan: There is also this ironical situation, that the more active a Member is the more expenses he is likely to have.

Mr. Bowles: My right hon. Friend is usually ahead of me, but on this occasion I have got that point in my notes. I have written down "Poverty prevents activity." Suppose that a Member makes a speech on road safety or mental deficiency or something which appeals to a large number of people not only in his constituency but outside; he gets a large number of letters. He may get 500 letters, which is nothing very much. My hon. Friend the Member for Willesden, West is one who gets 500 letters. If a Member acknowledges each one, it costs him l½d. each. [Interruption.]Hon. Members opposite look as if they do not acknowledge letters. I am talking of the acknowledgement, the card. It costs 1½d. to send it. Perhaps hon. Members opposite have always put a 2d. stamp on.
The matter is not dealt with in a sausage machine. It is considered, and no doubt hon. Members, including the hon. Members for Lewisham, West (Mr. H. A. Price) and for Cheadle (Mr. Shepherd), send a considered reply which costs another 2½d. It costs Is. to deal with three letters. If a Member has 500 letters to deal with, it costs him well over £8 and, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Bevan) said, one cannot afford to do that very often. One's Parliamentary activity is restricted by one's financial inability to do the job properly. I think that is shocking.
To my mind, it is wrong that Members should be worried financially. They have enough to worry about preparing speeches and so on. They should not have to worry about the present financial conditions of themselves and their families as well as about old age. I am sure that the Chancellor of the Exchequer is a man of sympathy in this matter. It is well pointed out in the Select Committee's Report that many Members cannot afford to buy the right food. Good health is very important in this job. These Members are really all the time eating bulk feeder foods—I think that is the term—no filler foods. I gave them up two years


ago, and I had forgotten the terms for them as well as what they taste like. The fact is that those Members are eating badly and their health is affected.
I hope it will be realised that this is a really serious matter. We should stand together in this matter, because all of us owe a duty to the Members who are "oppressed"— I quote the Prime Minister's term—financially by their Parliamentary duties. We also owe it to the dignity of the House.
I support the recommendations of the Select Committee in full. I think I am correct in saying that what the Select Committee implied was that hon. Members of this House ought to have a rise to £1,750. But as is described—I have forgotten whether it is in the part of the Report dealing with salaries or that dealing with non-contributory pensions— the position is that they have only recommended £1,500 with the other £250 going as a contribution to the pensions scheme. Therefore it is not a non-contributory scheme. The hon. Member for Esher (Mr. Robson Brown) seems to agree, and he was on the Committee. I am correct, am I?
The point is that this provision of £250 was out of what would have been an annual payment of £1,750. The Committee put the figure at £1,500 and recommended a pension, which can be called non-contributory, but all pensions are contributory. There cannot be such a thing as a non-contributory pension. Anything anybody spends on a contributory pension scheme comes from his employers. Obviously if a man is paid £5 a week and he is asked to pay £1 towards a pension scheme it still comes out of his wages. Under this recommendation the Government would pay £250 to what is called a non-contributory pension scheme and Members would receive a salary of £1,500.

Mr. Sydney Silverman: If I understand the position aright, the Select Committee's report tied together the pensions proposal with the salary proposal, so that each depended upon the other, and it would obviously be quite wrong, from their point of view, to consider whether one recommendation should be followed and not the other, because neither recommendation would have been made in that form but for the assumption that both would be accepted.

Mr. Bowles: I am sorry if I did not make that clear. That is what I am trying to say.

Mr. Clement Davies: Might I remind the hon. Gentleman that in paragraph 62 of the Select Committee's Report, after the reference to the
much more generous arrangements existing overseas,
there comes the phrase
consider that in all the circumstances, and on the understanding that their recommendation, for a pension scheme is definitely linked with it, the increase should be …

Mr. Bowles: I am much obliged to the right hon. and learned Gentleman. That is what I was trying to explain.
I may perhaps sum up the speech which I have been trying to make by quoting two short letters which I wrote to "The Times," the first one of which they published. I should like to have them both on the record. The first was as follows:
In your leading article today on Members' Pay, there is a clear assumption that if the increase in pay and pension proposed were to come into farce it would attract the wrong type of M.P.—a person pursuing politics as a career. It is not easy to become an M.P. The aspirant, against many competitors, has to submit himself to the severe scrutiny of a selection conference."—
and I know that there are ex-Members who have been going round the country for a long time trying to get bade—[An HON. MEMBER: "And ex-Ministers."] Yes, and ex-Ministers too—
and then if selected, he must be elected by the electors. So do not let us too readily assume that a person's ambition to enter Parliament is almost automatically achieved.
Your second objection is that the proposed pension would make Members cling to their seats and could become one of the strongest weapons in the hands of the Whips. Experience has shown that the reverse is the case. I have the honour to be one of the trustees of the Members' Fund and we all come away from each meeting heartbroken by what we hear of ex M.P.s or their widows' financial position. I do beg your readers to bear in mind that after years of service in the House, it is almost impossible to find employment and the poverty of many Members now is one of the Whips' strongest weapons.
Surely membership of the House is one of the most honourable ways of serving our fellows. Let the Members be honourably treated.
Perhaps I may draw the House's attention to the letter which was not published.


I think it is the better one. "The Times" had a leading article, I think on 8th March, and with it they closed the correspondence. This is what I wrote:
Sir,
You were good enough to print a letter from me on the 19th February. May I ask that privilege again?
In your leading article today you say the voluminous and deeply felt correspondence in 'The Times' shows the real difficulties presented by the Committee's proposals. It was your first leading article which bewildered so many readers by its apparent lack of grasp of the situation which led to this correspondence.
Now the financial position of some M.P.s is so bad that the Committee unanimously decided not to give the worst examples for fear the public would disbelieve them, but to give the average income after necessary expenses at £5 per week.
That is the average income.
Your ready suggestion that the pension problem would be partially solved by M.P.s contributing a little more than the proposed £24 shows you don't appreciate that many just could not do it.
There has been much correspondence that some M.P.s don't need the rise.
This is a point for the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
A means test has been suggested. Direct taxation largely remedies this, A man with £6,000 per annum taxable income paying 9s. Income Tax plus 6s. Surtax would pay back £387 10s. of the proposed £500 rise.
I do not think we need concern ourselves too much about that. Those who do not need the money need not draw it. I thought an hon. Member opposite indicated that he did not want to have it, and anyone who wishes to do so can take that stand. Otherwise the Chancellor can take £387 10s. out of the £500 in the case of those with a taxable income of the figure I have stated. To continue my quotation:
The main point is that poverty is curbing some M.P.s from giving their best service. If a Member makes a speech,"—
this is the point I was making earlier—
say on mental deficiency, he might easily receive 500 letters. To acknowledge each costs l½d. and to send a considered reply 2½d. This would cost him over £8 and a great deal of work in giving each case proper attention. He cannot afford to do this very often.
You say that the problem of the Member who must maintain two homes can only be met, as at present, by claiming it as an expense against Income Tax. Here is a common sophistry. This expense comes out of his salary and is too often confused with a business man's expense allowance which does not come out of his salary.

Finally, you suggest a solution might lie in reducing the demands on M.P.s' time. This will not solve the problem of the person whose only possible alternative employment must be a full week's work nearly 12 months a year. Those you obviously have in mind are not miners, engineers, etc. who are the people we should really be thinking about.
I am sorry to have occupied the time of the House so long, but I have not spoken here for some time, and I feel very strongly about this matter. I hope that my words will have an effect on the Government and on M.P.s who are wobbling at present on this issue, so that we can, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey said, do this quickly. His arguments about delay seemed to me to be quite right, and I beg hon. Members on both sides of the House to consider them carefully. I hope that I have not lowered the tone of what I have already said promises to be a first-class House of Commons debate. I thank hon. Members for listening to me.

5.0 p.m.

Sir Ian Fraser: I thought that the Select Committee earned the gratitude of the House by their work. The hon. Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish) opened the debate in a manner which we all commend. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Mr. Deedes) that this is not a party but a personal matter. How do we feel about it as individuals and so far as we take a view about the duties and responsibilities of our fellows in this House?
Obviously we must all declare an interest, but this is such a personal matter that I may be allowed to go on record as answering a question which I know will be asked by many of my constituents and many friends of mine in the ex-Service world. The question is, "Why are you interested in this matter?" I want to say, though I say it with diffidence, that I am not interested to any great extent for myself, because I earn a very good living outside this House. When I entered the House of Commons 30 years ago I had only a very few hundred pounds a year and there were times when I had to bring a sandwich down to the House because I could not afford to pay for dinner. Therefore, I understand both aspects—the aspect of one who does not need a rise and the aspect of one who does.
I have intervened because I am of opinion that a decision should be reached, and should be reached now. I very much agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford that public opinion is not properly guided in this matter. It is the responsibility of older Members of Parliament, of whom I count myself one, to try to help to make understood what we do, how we are placed and what we need. That is my excuse for speaking tonight.
My hon. Friend said that we must heed public opinion. It is my judgment that artisans and working-class people generally, getting good wages and who have had a considerable number of rises in the last few years, do not begrudge their Members of Parliament a rise in their salary or expenses, or whatever one likes to call it. It is my belief that businessmen understand perfectly that the payment here is inadequate for the services that are rendered and in view of the circumstances in which we work.
Who, then, is it who has reacted unfavourably? It is the large group of middle-class and retired people, people whose incomes have been gravely affected by the course of our affairs in the past 10 years, and who are so very much worse off than they were and who naturally blame their Members of Parliament. I do not think that because they feel like that we must accept an abrogation of our duty and responsibility. On the contrary, it lies upon us to explain the matter and to show what should be done, and then to justify what we have supported.
One hon. Member said—and many people outside have said it—that it is not a good thing to vote oneself money. This point has been put in various ways. The implication is that it is bad to vote oneself money; it is something one ought never to do. I fully agree that we ought not to do it if we can possibly help it. Much of our company law and much of our practice in corporations and in public life is based upon the principle that somebody else, not oneself, votes the money.
However, we are in the unfortunate position in which we must either avoid the duty of doing what is right for Parliament or, in doing what is right, we must do something for ourselves. Let it

not be said of us that we are doing this for ourselves. We are doing it for Parliament, because we want this Parliament to work well and we want future Parliaments to work well and to attract people to come to render their various services.
Therefore I say that it is right in all the circumstances that the Commons House of Parliament which controls the nation's finances should make its decision in this matter. It cannot be right that we should decide "no" and wrong that we should decide "yes" unless we decide on the merits. The people who jeer at us because we are voting for ourselves miss the whole point that it is our responsibility. It is one which we cannot escape and which we ought to be willing to undertake.
I do not know what view my constituents will take about this question. I shall report to them as quickly as I can. It is my guess that if the matter is put properly to my constituency by myself, or by the chairman of my association or leading figures there, they will be very willing to pay me £1,500 a year. They might be willing to pay me £2,000 a year. I do not think that they would be so ready to pay that to hon. Gentlemen opposite, but we should not expect that of them.
On the other hand, I am sure that the electors of many constituencies in the valleys of Wales and in West Yorkshire would be only too pleased to increase the pay of their Members of Parliament. Let us not fear an adverse public reaction if only we have the courage to explain the matter properly.
I pass to another form of criticism. In Caxton Hall a few weeks ago I addressed a meeting of 400 or 500 ex-Servicemen, members of the British Legion, gathered for the purpose of hearing an address at the end of their campaign to ask for larger war pensions. I was the speaker. We had questions, and one question I had to answer was, "Would not it be a shame if Members of Parliament voted themselves more money before our war pensions are put up?" I am President of the British Legion, and that was the question I had to answer. Many of us may have to answer it again. Perhaps I shall have to answer it at our annual conference at Whitsuntide.
It seems to me that the answer is that in Britain we have to have a good Parliament which works smoothly and well. We have to have a good judiciary which works smoothly and well and a good Civil Service. We have to have our public servants, wherever they serve in the sphere of public life. We have to make the conditions under which they work such that they will attract the right people to the job in all classes and from all classes, so that it will be possible for these organs of Government to operate properly.
It is just as right that the terms and conditions under which these different folks work shall be properly considered and dealt with on their merits as it is right that a newspaper should raise its price for the issue which it sells to the reader, or that any other commodity or service should be increased in price when the costs which are involved in the production of it go up. Conditions have changed and therefore there is now a case for considering a change in the remuneration, or expenses allowance, of Members of Parliament.
To my mind, it is just as simple as that. If we were to say that those who are responsible for the machinery of Government—Members of Parliament, the judges, the Civil Service and all the rest-were not to be remunerated until this or that class of electors were satisfied, then we should never raise the salary of any of our public servants. It is certain that the voters will never be wholly satisfied. Therefore it seems to me that we must take a view which is different from that of the man who says, "Would not it be a shame if they got their money first?" These are separate and distinct subjects. It may well be a matter for argument whether this or that aspect of our Welfare State should have the highest priority, but the first priority is that the organs of Government should operate properly and efficiently.
The argument about part-time work has been covered by other speakers, and I shall not elaborate on it, except to say that in my opinion the great variety of Members in this House is one of the sources of its strength. That some should devote the whole of their time and studies to Parliamentary matters is a good thing. That others belong to the professions or are in business or local life and earn a

living in some other way is a good thing. That variety should be maintained. We do not want a situation in which we have persons all of one kind or class or from one strata of society devoting all their time to this job. That would be very greatly to weaken the prestige and the representative quality of Parliament.
Though I do not wish to dwell upon the aspect of hardship, it is within my personal knowledge that a great many colleagues—hon. Friends of mine on both sides of the House—have not had the means decently and adequately to do the job which the electors have sent them to do in this House.
I have thought a lot about the variations proposed. I think that the simplest way to do the job is to give the rise which the Select Committee itself suggested. It is justified by the economic facts. It is one of those measures which takes account of all the differences amongst us, because it leaves each of us to spend the money in the way that best helps the job along.
I am sure that it would be a mistake to have Members of Parliament filling in forms, "clocking-in" on the job—coming here because if they did not come on a particular day for a particular hour they would not get so many guineas. That would be to lower their value and the respect in which the House is held, and it would make many of our attendances here quite "phoney" We may as well be honest with our constituents and say that very often we do not stay here when we do not have to. Why should we? He must be a lunatic who does. To have to come to the House and clock in to get a couple of guineas seems to me to be beneath contempt. On the other hand, it is better to have them than to be poor.
It has been suggested that this matter should be referred to the electors. It cannot be referred to the electors. I have thought about that most seriously, because I should have liked to have felt that someone else was to decide it. I do not see how it could be done. If it is left to the next General Election what will happen? There may be one or two—of whom I am one—who would dare to put it in his election address. But why would I dare? Because I have a majority of 17.800.
I would not have put it in my election address 30 years ago when I was fighting for a seat and scraped in by 700 votes. Had I done so I might have lost the odd vote from the odd person. How therefore are we to submit this to the voters? That is quite impossible. We have to face the fact that we must decide this, and we must not be blamed or sneered at for doing what many of us believe to be a proper duty.
The situation of old Members who dare not and cannot retire and who have to bring their harrowing stories to the Members' Private Committee is very serious. I would not rule out the possibility of making some far more generous and properly regulated provision for them. I think also that the Parliamentary Secretaries should be dealt with in this regard, and so should the Ministers. I do not think either are adequately paid.
We in this House are a corporate body. We are not only some 625 individuals, but are part of a House with a tremendous tradition and a tremendous feeling. Men sometimes enter this House determined to pull down its pillars. They do not stay long before they are its strongest supporters. We are like officers at their mess, and there ought to be a degree to which we are thinking and operating and working all for one and one for all. We must have our differences. Outside of those differences we can, from this Mother of Parliaments, make a tremendous contribution to good will, good feeling and good spirit amongst all classes in the community. It is important that we should begin amongst ourselves.

5.15 p.m.

Mr. David Grenfell: I would first like to pay a tribute to the hon. Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish). I have known him in this House and have noticed that he is a man of exceedingly good taste. Never was that good taste better displayed than this afternoon. I have never heard a speech—delivered in English—of higher quality. I do most heartily congratulate him on his treatment of the theme, the marshalling and presentation on the salient points of his case and upon his general rounding off of a perfect case. He was like an impressario.
I am interested in this subject because I suppose that, in the ordinary way, 1 should be one of the first applicants for

a pension. If it goes by seniority then I come first. I have been in this House now for 32 years. I have lived not with shame but with pride the life of a working man in this Britain of ours. I went to school for the first time 70 years ago last week. I was then two years and 10 months old. Some of us know the circumstances in which sometimes a boy of that age is better out of the house than in it. A brother was due to be born and my mother sent me to school with an elder brother and a sister. I went toddling away with pride to the school 1¼ miles away to start a great scholastic career. I found there a most marvellous teacher, a woman of great kindness and maternal interest.
I remember with almost perfect detail those years before I began my career. I had no intention of going to Parliament. I wanted to go to the Wild West. I had read something about it. I went to school and had my share of boyish adventures. Early in life, however, I started reading, in Welsh, something about men's hopes for human betterment, for a better society and about the part that Parliament must play in bringing those changes about. Practically all my reading was in Welsh. I was about three or four years old when I started these studies, and I have been reinforced in my conviction that, in spite of what has been achieved, there are still victories to be won. The task which lies before us is not only to provide decent social conditions in this wonderful little island in which we live, but to give an example of leadership to the world.
I worked down the pit just over 60 years ago. I have worked for 23 years underground, at home and abroad. I met my opposite numbers from Germany, France, Belgium and Poland, working in the mines in America, and I came to realise that many of them had ideas similar to ours. This is a very hurried sketch of the background of my life. I came here many years afterwards. I know of no place with more generous instincts and broader sympathies than this House of Commons.
I sometimes found strong opposition to changes, even for the better, but circumstances helped to bring about those changes. Whatever people say, we shall never abdicate our claim to having played a great part in bringing about a better standard of life in Britain. I am


very proud to have assisted in a modest way during the 32 years in which I have been a Member. There were one or two years when I took up more columns in HANSARD than anyone else, but speakers were few in those days. I very often talked out of my turn. But I have never had occasion to be more pleased with the tone of the House than I have been today.
I beg my comrades on this side of the House and on the other—hon. Members opposite are my comrades in this respect, because they are all enrolled in our plan for national and world rehabilitation—to take the opportunity of establishing a responsibility to see that the servants of the House are not left neglected and deserted when they have done their work.
I am not worried. I have never worried in my life. I have always had plenty of faith that tomorrow is a better day than today, and the day after will be better still. But although I am not worried I know that many people are not given to so much optimism as the brightest optimist among us. We have to cheer each other up and convince each other that when the time comes both sides of the House must join forces in doing the right thing.
There will be plenty of opportunities to do so, and this is one. This is an occasion when we must all work together. Whether a person comes here young, as I did, or old, as others have, there is nothing wrong in seeing that in days of misfortune, when his luck turns against him, he should have reasonable guarantees of sustenance and support. We are now embarked upon the building of a guaranteed and secure condition of life in the State. It does not matter that I am speaking as one who might be claiming a pension. It will not come for a little while. If my health is maintained I shall not want a pension for a long time, but I do want to urge this pension scheme.
I am, perhaps, one of the most unselfish Members. Despite the poverty with which I have been closely acquainted all my life, I have never wanted for a penny, and I have a faith within me that tells me now, as it always has, that I shall never be in need of a penny. But everybody has not that assurance within him, and unless we follow through the proposal about which we are talking this afternoon, we shall fail to establish a

sense of readiness to provide mutual guarantees in the rest of the country.
The country looks to us for an example. Here is our opportunity. We are to provide pensions for those who have reached the age when they can no longer continue and wish to retire. I shall not bother very much about the conditions, but I am anxious that the House should seize the opportunity which has been offered to it today. There should be no reluctance on the part of anyone to throw his good will and support into this proposal. There should be no difficulty in finding the resources to provide the pensions. There is nothing in the arguments which are based upon the cost of such provisions.
I appeal to the House to accept this proposal, not because I have any personal interest, but because I have been its champion for many years. I felt as strongly about this subject when I gave evidence before the Committee which inquired into it about seven or eight years ago. Let hon. Members read it up. I say nothing today that I did not say then. I am convinced that this House will do credit to itself, and add cubits to its stature and reputation in the eyes of the country and the world if it accepts this proposal.

5.23 p.m.

Air Commodore A. V. Harvey: I feel privileged to follow the Father of the House, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Gower (Mr. Grenfell). I shall refer to the point he made about pensions for ex-Members of Parliament later in my speech. I am sure we all agree that he is not really concerned with the dates at which he will draw a pension.
I ought to declare my interest in the matter. I work in business, outside the House, on a fairly considerable scale, and within my own limits, I believe that I also work on a fairly considerable scale within the House. One thing I do feel is that when a Member is also working outside —whatever work it is—it takes its toll on his health. I have heard it suggested by medical people that 25 years in the House of Commons may knock five or 10 years off a Member's life. That is very difficult to assess, but towards the end of July one begins to see jaded Members, whose interest is lagging. I sometimes wonder if we do not try to do too much, and


whether we should not achieve more if we did less.
A Member dies after putting in 25 years of service to the House. We can be here at 2.30 p.m. the following day and hear pleasant words from Mr. Speaker, and afterwards rarely hear his name mentioned again. It is said that nobody is deader than a dead M.P. A great deal of the work done by Members is not appreciated by the public. My hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Mr. Deedes) talked about educating the public. We are rather like other professional people; we provide good material for comedians and others, and we have to take their jibes in good part. Nevertheless, the public do not really understand what our duties are today, or how they have grown in the last 10 years. We have to educate the public in that respect rather more than we have done.
I think the Report of the Select Committee is admirable, and my sympathies are with it, and I think we owe the Committee a debt of gratitude for what it has done, but we must be very careful not to give a wrong impression to the public. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish), in a magnificent speech, said there were many pension and wage claims and that there always would be. I think that is the case, but, nevertheless, there is rather more restraint at the present time than for some years. If all those concerned pressed their claims we should be in some difficulty. The case for increasing Members' salaries, or paying them more for their expenses, has to be put to the public, and it has to be well timed, and I am not sure that this is the time to do it.
If it is not well timed we shall arouse indignation, not only amongst old-age pensioners, for instance, but also among many men and women who are earning their daily living. It is easy for us to legislate if we are all agreed about a thing. I think we are all generally agreed that there is a strong case for doing something to assist hon. Members financially, and I think we are all generally agreed that something should be done about that. Therefore, it would be comparatively easy for us to vote ourselves some assistance, but I think all the reasons for that should first be explained to the public. I wonder whether the time for that is now.
I do not want to bring politics into this debate, but nevertheless not long ago, for various reasons, the country was in very straitened circumstances. For various reasons the position has straightened itself out. However, we are not yet out of the wood, and we ought to remember that in considering this question. If we were to carry out all the recommendations of the Select Committee, the cost would not be very great in terms of money today. Indeed, the cost would be comparatively small, but that is not the only consideration, for we have to set an example in this as in other ways, and the public look to Members of Parliament for an example in these matters.
However, I would say a special word about the Parliamentary Secretaries. They have almost the worst deal of all. A Parliamentary Secretary usually takes up his post in the early thirties or middle thirties when he should be on the upgrade in his profession or business. He is probably married and a father, and may be sending his children to a private school. I know some hon. Members who have had to stop sending their children to private schools, who have sold their small cars and taken to bicycling to work, they are so hard up. That is not right.
A Parliamentary Secretary has a heavy responsibility in the House anyhow, but if the senior Minister is in another place his responsibility is much heavier for representing the Ministry in this House. The junior Minister receives £1,500 a year, and the Permanent Secretary receives £4,000 a year, perhaps, and he also has the prospect of a considerable pension, and enjoys continuity in his job, whereas the Parliamentary Secretary not only has much less income from his post, not more than £1,500, but can hope to hold his office for only two or three years, and has no future he can confidently look forward to at all.
I am only thinking aloud, but I should say that a Parliamentary Secretary is worth at least £3,000 per annum and that senior Ministers are worth more than they are getting today. It comes to this. We are getting government on the cheap. We cannot have monarchy on the cheap, and we cannot really have government on the cheap. Other countries are paying more for the government they get


than this country pays for its government. We have to explain all that to the public.
There is no doubt that Private Members have for many years suffered hardships. One can observe the sort of hardships they endure by going into the Tea Room, for instance, or the Dining Room, and observing what they have for their meals. There is no doubt there is real hardship. One may see a Member unpacking sandwiches for his evening meal, and that on a night when he will have to be here until the early hours of the morning. It is just not good enough.
The justification for this case, the arguments for it, could have been made much earlier. The Parliament that was elected in 1935 lasted 10 years, during which a vast increase took place in the cost of living. I had not the honour of being a Member of the House then. There was the advantage, from the point of view of making this case, of a Coalition Government for much of the time. I should have thought that the parties, prior to the 1945 General Election, could have put this case to the public. We cannot go to the public at the next General Election to out bid or under bid each other in our election addresses to get votes. That is out of the question. The way to put the case to the public is this. The parties should state it in their manifestos, and they should say in their manifestos what payments should be made to Members.
I do not believe we can give all that the Select Committee recommends, but I do believe that we can do something to alleviate the hardships that hon. Members have to endure. It would not be for me to name a figure, but, perhaps, such a sum of £250 or £300 a year might be paid to Members to cover their out-of-pocket expenses or in the form of amenities, to tide them over until we have a general revision of our salaries and expenses. In the meantime, let us educate the public in what the Select Committee recommends.
We have the worst facilities of any parliament in the world. Until the rebuilding of the Chamber after the war one had to interview constituents and others on small, narrow benches that I found very uncomfortable, and they were in the Lobbies. One could not possibly run a commercial business like that. If one did

one would very soon find oneself "in the red." That is what would happen if one tried to run a commercial business in the conditions of work of Private Members here. I hope that very shortly we may put up a suitable building for Members where they can do their work during the long hours by day and by night that we are here.
There is no parliament in the world that carries out its duties better than this House carries out its duties, and there is not one in the world that has the traditions that this House has, and I would even say that there is not one that has the spirit of this House. For instance, we quarrel and row with each other across the Floor of the House, saying all sorts of hard things about each other, but outside the Chamber relations are pretty good and tempers aroused inside the Chamber very soon die down—at any rate that is what I find.
There are times, however, when the House has a problem to face, when we are all agreed in general about what should be done to solve it. This is one of those occasions when we ought to be so agreed, and when we ought to be especially careful to do what is right. It is not merely a matter of money. Compared with what we as a nation are spending today, the cost of the proposals is very small.
It must be remembered, however, that we are living in a day of specialists —unfortunately, Specialists are Members of the House and make valuable contributions to our debates on their subjects. We have specialists from the professions and various industries. We have them here because in one sense membership of the House is not a full-time job, and it would be most unfortunate if it became a full-time job, whether we paid £1,500 or £2,000 or £3,000 a year for it. In the long run, the House itself would suffer. We want men from all walks of life—and, it may be, those who have a little money of their own prefer to sit in the Standing Committees in the mornings, although I do not expect many of them do. My point is that we do not want a moulded type of Member. The country would lose by it.
I hope the House will weigh up very carefully the Select Committee's Report, and that we shall do something about it. I should not like to say what. I have


already mentioned a figure. First of all I think the public should understand what is required, and that it would be best if the parties as such stated the case to the public by the means at their disposal, through their literature, and on the radio and television, and in their manifestos, and I hope that the conditions of Members will be improved for the Members of the future.

5.39 p.m.

Mr. C. R. Attlee: I am speaking tonight, not from a party point of view or as the leader of a party, but as a fairly old Member of the House, the runner up to my right hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Mr. Grenfell) as Father of the House. We have had some most remarkable speeches today from both sides of the House, notably by my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish), the hon. Member for Ashford (Mr. Deedes) and the hon. Member for Morecambe and Lonsdale (Sir I. Fraser). We are dealing with a subject of vital importance today, especially when we consider it in relation to the position of democracy in the world. We in this House have a very heavy responsibility.
We have received from this Committee—it has done its work admirably—what amounts to a finding of fact by a very competent and very representative jury who had all the evidence laid before them. In paragraph 52 it is stated:
The evidence leaves Your Committee no option but to report that the expenses necessarily entailed by Membership of Parliament are such that the present payment of £1,000 a year is not sufficient to enable Members to meet these expenses and to keep themselves and their families In reasonable circumstances while attending to their extensive Parliamentary duties.
That is a finding of fact. We must accept that. It is open to us to consider any alternative proposals, but I think that we have to accept that as a fact.
The hon. and gallant Member for Macclesfield (Air Commodore Harvey) was right to say that we have been slow in these matters. It was a very long time before the first £400 a year was instituted, and it was a very long time before that was brought up in accordance with the cost of living. I came here in 1922 on the £400 a year which had been settled in 1911, and we lived under that until 1937.

Mr. Thomas Williams: It was until 1931.

Mr. Attlee: It dropped to £360. There it was. It was a long time before we got beyond that. Those were pretty hard days. I know how many of our fellow Members suffered as a result of it. I myself found it difficult. I had some private means, as they say, which I watched growing less year by year, but for many years I never went into the Dining Room and had to be content with a House of Commons sausage. It is good that we should all be able to mix in the public rooms of this House. I do not like divisions in which we find one lot hiving off this way and another lot hiving off somewhere else. We have a collective sense in this House.
We made certain changes. I recall very well the changes brought in by Mr. Chamberlain and the changes introduced by my right hon. Friend. It is very interesting to read the speeches on those occasions. I think that the pick of the speeches on the last occasion was that by the present Lord Hailsham, when he was Mr. Quintin Hogg. His speech is worth quoting. He said:
There is always a danger in democracy that the two parties abuse each other so much that the general public believes that which is evil which is spoken by both of them, and comes in the end to disregard and despise its democratic institutions."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 29th May, 1946; Vol. 423, c. 1258.]
It is important that we should have, if not a good conceit of our individual selves, at least a good conceit of us collectively in this House. We know that our work is important. It is undoubtedly true that the work has increased very much even since I have been in the House. I am one of those who might be called full-time Members of Parliament. I believe that we want a mixture of Members with plenty of outside experience, but we do have a number of Members who give up their whole time to this work. Many of them get no limelight at all. I do not think that the general public realise that Members who are working here full time, for the money they get, often work 16 hours a day. For the last 25 years I have worked on an average 16 hours a day, and sometimes 17 hours, in this House, and it is fairly heavy work.
Another point is that, after all, it is a fairly precarious life. Unless one happens to have a very safe seat one never knows


when it may not end. It is extraordinarily difficult outside certain limited professions and occupations to get any other work. For most kinds of work one has to be there at a certain time regularly. One cannot be regular in this House. One never knows what is going to happen. One may be put on a Committee and so forth. Therefore, the means of external sustentation of the Parliamentary expense allowance is very precarious. All these things ought to be taken into account by the general public.
I should like to say, incidentally, how much I sympathise with what was said by the hon. and gallant Member for Macclesfield about junior Ministers. 1 can remember the time when a junior Minister was not supposed to do anything. He appeared now and again in the House, and perhaps answered a Question, but he was forbidden to answer any supplementary questions. Nowadays the work is so much heavier that he really has to do a great deal of work. If his Minister is any good, he gives the junior Minister a lot of work to do, for that is the only way to train him.
I agree with what has been said, but it is a difficult matter. We had difficulty in the last Parliament in regard to the Whips. We all admire and love our Whips. However, the Whips have to make a sacrifice. Of course, they get a room in which to sit, which is very unusual for a Member of Parliament, but otherwise what do they get? They get more kicks than ha'pence. It may be said that they get honour and glory. The trouble is that honour and glory do not fill a stomach.
All these years we have really been in a period of transition. At one time it was almost axiomatic that a Member had plenty of money, and, therefore, "What did it matter?" As has been said, we got our government on the cheap, just as we used to get our Fighting Services on the cheap. In the Services one was not supposed to have to live on one's pay. Those days have departed. It has been the virtue of this House and of our institutions that we constantly adapt ourselves to new circumstances.
It is interesting to read the very remarkable letter written by Lord Randolph Churchill in 1892 in which he prophesied the rise of the Labour movement and how, if things were done right,

the Labour movement would fit in with our constitution, or otherwise we might have a revolution. It is interesting that even at that time he had voted for payment of Members. Payment of Members has now been accepted, and we are today on not that but the amount.
Looking at the Report, we see that great care has been taken about the amount. Personally, I do not think that £1,500 is too much. When we consider the deductions which have to be made and the expenses which have to be met, I do not think that that is a sum which will attract a person to come into the House merely for financial reasons. That is a delusion. Anyway, if someone does, he will go out again pretty quickly. He will certainly find himself very disappointed with the amount when he discovers what he has to spend.
I entirely agree with what has been said about voluntary service and am in favour of it. However, looking round the House, we see hon. Members who do great service here. They have abilities which might command very high salaries outside. A very great deal of public service and self-sacrifice is entailed on the part of hon. Members. Even if they are paid £1,500 per year, able men and women will be making a sacrifice in the public service.
I should like to say a word or two about pensions, because there is some controversy on that subject. It was suggested that if people had pensions looming in the distance they would be more amenable to the Whips. I do not believe that there is much in that.
It has been said that if Members of Parliament were entitled to pensions they would be less amenable to the Whips. I am one of the few people in this House who is privileged to be entitled to a pension, and I recall very well the third day after I became Prime Minister walking down the stairs of Number 10. As I looked at the picture of Lord Bath, I thought, "I have beaten you anyway; you were only Prime Minister for two' days." I believe that when he retired he did get various pensions, and I thought, "I have got a pension too."
Believe me, as a person who has lived on a precarious salary and on a Parliamentary salary for a number of years, it made me feel much more independent.


and I am convinced that we shall not get numbers of people humbly following the Whips because of the prospect of a pension. It may be that if they are entitled to pensions, the Whips will find them much more obstreperous.
There is, I think, the security which a pension gives. One of the saddest things I have experienced in my time in this House—and I have seen the personnel of this House change pretty often—was having good colleagues of mine, who, I knew, were dying, and who could not leave this House. That is really a terrible thing. Members who should have been resting could do nothing but just sit about and come into vote and nothing else—and that after years of public service.
I think that we should do more for them than we do at the present time. I think that it is due to them. I do not believe that, properly put, we shall find resentment among the body of electors. I have very seldom heard anything about this. I have been in this House white increases have been made, and it has always been open to quite a lot of my constituents to say, "Why should you give Members of Parliament more than we are getting?"
We do not live at the present time in a regime in which we have complete equality all round. If we were to accept the principle that because we cannot do everything we should like at the moment, or do everything which we should like for the old-age pensioners, therefore we must not do anything for a Member of Parliament, that would affect every kind of occupation. When the payment of Members was brought in at £400 a year, the old-age pensioner was getting 5s. a week at the age of 70. That did not seem to deter our predecessors. One could make a pathetic case of that. We have every sympathy with the old-age pensioners, but we really cannot run the whole of society on that basis.
I think that in this case we have to face facts and realise that this place does most important work. Of course, it is easy to laugh at Parliament and Members of Parliament. I have an intense pride in Parliament and in being a Member. I should never be ashamed in the least of meeting any of my constituents and telling

them that I propose to support these proposals, because I think they are right. I have never found my constituents and my friends, however poor, fail to realise that we have to give the man or the woman the rate for the job.
Frankly speaking, what we do for our people in this House of Commons, whether it is by way of amenities, or expenses or pensions, does not really come up to the rate for the job as exemplified in Parliaments of less antiquity and less authority than our own.

5.55 p.m.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. R. A. Butler): I am sure that we all accept the fact that the contributions so far made to this debate have been very impressive, including that made in such a human manner by the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition.
I come to this Box not to take part in a political debate any more than any of my predecessors in the debate. I have always thought that in my high office the Chancellor of the Exchequer has to be at the service of the House, and it is in that spirit that I propose to make a contribution today. I accept absolutely the view that the dignity of Parliament must be maintained, and I also accept the statements which have been made, which fortunately cannot be verified by exact details, because that would be wrong, of the situation of ordinary Members and of old Members to which the right hon. Gentleman referred.
Indeed, the House may be entertained to hear that I have had more letters asking me not to speak on this occasion from both sides of the House than I have ever had before. I was personally somewhat tempted, because I do not think that it is a very easy debate to take part in, to obey this injunction, but on reflection I thought that the picture, as I shall describe it, would not be complete if I did not take the somewhat unenviable task in this debate of putting some facts before the House.
I undertake to the House that I shall in no way close any door, but if I put facts and schemes and alternatives before the House, hon. Members must do me the justice to realise that I am doing that so as to be at the service of the House, and I am not committing myself today to any of the schemes put forward, nor am I


committing the Government. If I approach this in that way, I may be able to be of some service. I should like to pay tribute to the opening speech of the hon. Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish). The Leader of the Opposition referred to junior Ministers, and I think that he will realise that in my time junior Ministers do most of my work for me, which is very different from the old days when the right hon. Gentleman started his career. With regard to his reference to the Whips, we are delighted to hear that he loves and supports his own Whips, but he has very strange ways of showing his passion.
The other speeches which we have heard, both from this side and from the other side of the House, deserve also a word of appreciation from anybody taking part in this debate. They have hitherto run on very similar lines and had a similar vein going through them. It may well be that in the later part of the debate, particularly if I do not speak too long, there will be an opportunity for other Members to put perhaps a different slant on our affairs. I very much doubt, being closely in touch with hon. Members throughout the House on this matter, if any different spirit will be shown. If any different slant is shown, I think that the House can take it that the spirit is the same. I remind the House that the Government have already stated, in the words of the Prime Minister, that:
in the view of Her Majesty's Government, it would not be right, in present circumstances, to proceed in the particular manner recommended by the Select Committee.
The Prime Minister continued:
There is no doubt that a number of hon. Members are pressed by serious difficulties because heavy and necessary expenses absorb so much of the Parliamentary salary.
That we all accept, all feel and all know. The Prime Minister went on to say:
The House may wish to consider alternative methods of dealing with this problem."— [OFFICIAL REPORT, 14th April, 1954; Vol. 526, c. 1150–51.]
My claim of justification for my intervention this afternoon is that hitherto some of these alternative methods have not been put before the House. Although some of them were considered by the Select Committee, there is no reason why someone should not have a shot at an alternative method. At any rate, they

would make a useful contribution to the debate, whatever happens to them, and whatever views hon. Members may take about them.
In this, therefore, I slightly disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Mr. Deedes), who also made so eloquent a contribution to the debate, that it would be wrong to go into details. While I shall not go into much detail, I have already found that if one does not explain how a plan might work, people simply do not understand it and reject it without proper comprehension. If people reject a plan after understanding it, that is quite another matter. This is essentially a matter for the House of Commons as a whole.
I shall not, therefore, go back over the statement already made by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister about the salary, except to say this, which I ought to say if the House and the country are to get a proper assessment of this matter. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Air Commodore Harvey) no doubt stated what a great many of my right hon. and hon. Friends on this side feel: namely, that the House ought to give an example to the country, that Members of Parliament should not therefore vote themselves an increase in salary, and that there are various interests in the country who would resent such action.
There is no doubt that the question of giving an example to the country and not raising our own salaries at present is held by a large number of Members on this side of the House. Therefore, when we come to our final decision as a House on this matter, it would be wrong that that attitude, which is an honourable one and which I have tested out in frequent conversations with those who hold it, should not be weighed in the balance together with the other arguments which have been put earlier in this debate. Therefore, we are indebted also to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Macclesfield for putting a point of view which is strongly felt in the House.
My hon. and gallant Friend also referred to the question of putting this matter at the General Election. Again, in answer to the many letters I have received from both sides of the House, I want to give no final view on this, but I will give my own reaction. I have


never liked the idea of this being a matter at the Genera) Election. My hon. and gallant Friend put perfectly sincerely the possibility of an agreement being reached and everybody having it in their election addresses. That may or may not be a possibility.
A humorist, in a letter to me on this subject, said:
For goodness sake do not put this off to the next Election, otherwise the House of Commons will insist on an early Election and Her Majesty's Government's beneficent reign may be brought to an end.
That particular argument is not weighing with me, since I am well aware of the permanence of Her Majesty's Government.
I shall not, therefore, refer any further to the question of salary, except to remind hon. Members, as was brought out by the hon. Member for Bermond-sey, that when Mr. David Lloyd George originally said remains eternally true. I had the same quotation in my notes, but as the hon. Member gave it I need not detain the House. It was in 1911 that the right hon. Gentleman said that the payment to Members was essentially an allowance. That is really what it is. If we look at the Select Committee's Report, that is brought out most graphically.
It is not really a salary of £1,000 at all. With the occupational expenses removed, it comes to about £250, which is roughly £5 a week. If the ordinary public do not believe this, I ask them to envisage any other career or profession in which the employer does not pay a great many of the expenses for his employees. We have to pay them ourselves. The worst of our job is that not only do we pay our own occupational expenses, but our employer reserves the right to sack us at frequent or infrequent intervals.
And so we really have a very hard job. We have no outlook of continuity, and we never know what we shall have left from those expenses which we must pay. It is wrong for the public not to understand that to run round a large rural constituency or to canvass in an urban constituency, to provide the locomotion for doing so—even if we borrow it from our friends, they probably want something back at some time—or to pay for the telephone and postage, which the

hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr. Bowles) referred to, or to pay for the extra lodging, to which I shall be referring later in one of my alternative suggestions, is a very heavy imposition on the ordinary Member of Parliament and his wife and family.
It was a particularly good thing that reference has been made to the strain which an M.P.'s life imposes on his family, and particularly on his wife. Political wives have a rougher deal than any others. The way they stand up to it is really remarkable. They may want to see more of us—I hope so. At any rate, they very often get left out, and at the functions when we take them with us they are not always so interested as we think they are.
Many hon. Members feel that if we cannot proceed with the recommendations of the Select Committee's Report, some other alleviation is necessary. Before I deal with that, I will deal with the question of the Pension Fund. The Government have had severe difficulty in accepting the recommendations of the Select Committee about the Pension Fund. To begin with, we have not got continuous employment here, for reasons sometimes beyond our control. Secondly, a non-contributory scheme, even if we read the rather vague paragraph 62 of the Select Committee's Report, to which reference has been made, would not, I think, be very well accepted by public opinion, whatever the view of public opinion might be about the case for the salary.
There are many people in the community, for example, living on fixed pensions or savings, and many salaried and self-employed people, quite apart from the great bulk of organised labour, who might not fully understand this move. I suggest to the Members of the Select Committee and to the House as a whole that this matter wants a great deal more attention before the House can accept it. It is a question which is very controversial in the country and is not yet properly worked out.
I have been examining the state of the Members' Fund. The present state of the Fund is some £78,000 in capital, of which about £74,700 is represented in investments. The income comes as from subscriptions to about £7,400, and altogether to £9,800. This is administered with great devotion by certain of our


colleagues in the House, and the hon. Member for Nuneaton has already referred to the harrowing cases with which he and his friends have to deal.
If we have to deal with this matter, I would much rather be brought into a discussion about the present state of the Fund and its future than adhere immediately—or, indeed, as far as I am concerned, at present, at any time—to the proposal made by the Select Committee. But that does not mean that we are not extremely concerned about the position of old and retiring Members.
I have been here only 25 years, which is as nothing compared with the right hon. Member for Gower (Mr. Grenfell) and my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and others. It is quite long enough to remember many distinguished personalities, not only on the other side—I would rather not mention names—but on this side of the House, who in their declining years have had literally to be rescued in a manner which was not dignified but which they accepted through sheer need. Therefore, I am not neglecting the position of the old. I am only saying that I do not think we have yet found a solution. If my services can be of any use, I will come into this question and discuss it further.
Now we come to the position of alternative possibilities. The position as I see it is that, after the speeches which have been made, I have no necessity to justify the need for some sort of help. That has been mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister; the Leader of the Opposition referred to paragraph 52 of the Committee's Report, and I think the House can take it for granted, without my detaining hon. Members, that there is a need.
And so we have considered a large number of possible alternatives. I do not want to be dogmatic about any of them, but I will put some of them before the House. A good many of them are known. To be absolutely clear and frank, I must start by saying that any expenses scheme must be a really genuine expenses scheme, otherwise one falls back on the alternative of the salary scheme. So it is no good my putting forward any expenses scheme unless it is related to expenses and would genuinely work. If I did not say that, there might be misunderstanding as to how it would work.
The first possibility is to provide a sum—for the sake of argument, let it be somewhere between £100 and £500 a year—against which each Member would draw, free of tax, reimbursement of necessary expenses on showing that he had actually incurred the sum claimed. That is a straightforward and simple method of providing expenses. If the expenses were less than the maximum, according to our Inland Revenue rules a Member would receive the amount actually spent. If the expenses were more, he would meet the balance from his £1,000 salary, and he could, of course, claim tax relief accordingly as at present.
The effect of that possibility might not be very different from an increase in salary, particularly if the maximum were fixed at a figure which most Members would be able to claim. But it would be founded on a different principle and the House might think that such a scheme would be defensible. In particular everyone will readily realise that many classes of expenses which an hon. Member incurs, for instance, on secretarial help, postage and so on, relate to services which an ordinary employer provides as a matter of course without cost to the employee.
There are various refinements which one could add to this idea, that is, to possibility No. 1. One could say that only certain defined classes of expense would be claimed against this sum, such as secretarial and postage expenses. The advantage of this particular refinement would be that everyone knows that these are the sort of expenses which an M.P. must necessarily incur and which are directly related to the actual carrying out of his duties, as distinct from the expenses he might incur to put himself in a position to carry them out. The amount would be within pretty definable limits, necessarily determined by the job itself and not due to personal choice or the idiosyncrasies of the individual Member. That is a refinement on the first idea.
Another idea would be to provide various services to hon. Members in kind, without charge. One idea which has been canvassed and which I think the Committee looked at is to provide a pool of secretaries for the use of hon. Members. In this hot weather this sounds a cool and attractive idea, but I can assure hon. Members that there would be


formidable difficulties. First, it would necessarily be extravagant, for it would be impossible to provide a service adequate to meet peak demand without a great deal of wasted time when the demand was slack or during the Recesses. The administration of such a scheme would, I think, have to be in the hands of the House, not of the Government, and, therefore, there would have to be negotiations with the authorities here. It would be a troublesome job.
There would also be the difficulties to which my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Macclesfield has referred about accommodation. He was quite right to raise the question of the difficulty that we have over accommodation. I certainly have noticed it after the exceptional opportunities I have had of visiting Legislatures in a great many other countries where the physical circumstances are far preferable to what we have here. In America they have secretaries provided and they have more than one room, not like the Whips here all in one room. They also have all sorts of facilities for interviewing people which we have not got.
Another idea is to provide free postage, telephones or telegrams over and above what is now provided. These schemes have been examined on previous occasions and the decision has gone against them. There would be some awkward problems of control in such a scheme. For instance, it would not be reasonable for the taxpayer to pay for a Member to send perhaps scores or hundreds of telegrams to his constituents giving hot news of his achievements in the House. Trunk calls represent another service to which Members might feel tempted to resort a little to freely if they were free.
But the real point about these particular items is that they do not at present represent anything like the heaviest of the necessary expenses which hon. Members incur. If they were provided free they would not alone provide enough relief and certainly not enough to be regarded as a remedy for the present situation.
So I come to the proposal which has been noised abroad, but I do not think has been fully put—the possibility of a subsistence allowance, to which the hon. Member for Bermondsey referred. If we

look at this we must be careful to ensure that it does not mean reimbursement of ordinary living expenses; no one has a right to that; it means an allowance which reimburses a person for extra subsistence to which he is necessarily put in carrying out his duties. There is no doubt that hon. Members do incur such expenses.
A special and distinguishing feature of the M.P.'s job is that it has to be done in two places, Westminster and his constituency. One of these must normally be away from home, so to that extent it means extra subsistence and expense. There is certainly a logical case for a scheme of subsistence allowances, and the advantage of looking at such a scheme is that it would conform to the ordinary common practice in outside employment, namely, in business, in trade union circles, in the Civil Service, where we operate it, and so forth.
On the other hand, when we come to examine the details of such a scheme, it must be to some extent restrictive. I would express the details of such a scheme as follows for the benefit of hon. Members, as this debate was suggested for the purpose of the views of hon. Members being considered. If the Member has a home outside London—and I am coming to the problem of London, which must be met in this scheme if we are sticking to the rigours and the standards I set earlier in my speech—he would be eligible for a night's subsistence allowance for every night spent in London by reason of his Parliamentary duties. If the hon. Member maintains only one home and that home is in London, he would not be eligible for the allowance in respect of nights spent in London, but possibly he would be eligible for the allowance in respect of nights spent in his constituency in pursuance of his Parliamentary duties. We would thus stick to the principle of "home" and "away from home."

Mr. S. N. Evans: rose—

Mr. Butler: I think I had better finish this part of my speech and then the hon. Member can ask me a question.
Logically, this scheme should not apply to Members for London constitutencies. I purposely said earlier that we should consider expense or subsistence allowances and if I am to put the facts before the House they must be based on some principle. The Member for a constituency


outside London has to attend both in London and in his constituency. This means that he keeps two homes going or he has to stay in an hotel, a club or somewhere else for the night. Whichever he does, he is clearly incurring extra necessary subsistence expenses either in London or in his constituency.
To preserve the symmetry in the case of a Member for a London constituency, the job does not require him to attend in two places but in one only. It does not require him to be away from his base on duty, and, therefore, does not involve him in much extra subsistence allowance, although it may involve him in a bit. A scheme based on the subsistence principle, if it is genuinely worked out, and if there be a feeling in the House that it is worth while to pursue it, ought to give less to the London M.P. than to others.

Mr. Mellish: As a London Member I should like to suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that he should remember that, because the London Member's constituency is nearer to this House than are the constituencies of other hon. Members, he is likely to have more constituents coming to him at the House, which in itself involves extra expense.

Mr. Butler: Looking at the permutations and combinations of every scheme known to me, I reject the idea that the London M.P. has no extra expenses, but if such a scheme as I have suggested is introduced, based on the ordinary practice of trade unions and of business, we will have to make a differentiation between the allowance for a London Member and that for a Member from outside London. I do not want to go into the detail of defining the London area either in the terms used by the Inland Revenue or in some other terms.
But hon. Members might want a picture of the sort of amount involved. The only guide that I can give on this subject without going into the matter in great detail and producing an actual scheme, which I am not doing, is the sort of level allowed for civil servants and Ministers when they are away for the night. This is of the order of £2 a night. This could be drawn from the Fees Office by hon. Members in respect of such nights as they necessarily spend away from their homes by reason of their Parliamentary duties. It is impossible to give an actual assessment of what this would come to, but in

order to save hon. Members mathematical calculations, and to relieve them of any anxiety in working this out, if it is a case of Parliament meeting 30 weeks in the year, it would come to between £200 and £300 a year.
I have heard of objections made to the possibility of clocking in, one of which has been referred to in this debate. I would not suggest any such rigorous method, and I would base the allowance on ordinary business and trade union practice, with hon. Members drawing it from the Fees Office, if there were general feeling amongst hon. Members that such a scheme was possible.
I want to draw the attention of the House to the fact that an advantage of a scheme of this kind—some of the disadvantages must be obvious to those listening to me—is that it would be entirely optional. If there are hon. Members amongst us, of whom I know many, who have a conscience in this matter and do not want to draw a salary or any more expenses; or if there are hon. Members who do not need by their circumstances to draw any more money, they need not do so, and it would be possible for hon. Members who are eligible to draw this if they so desire. Each individual Member of Parliament could decide on his own, if such a scheme were introduced, whether he wanted the allowance or not. As far as I am aware, this is the first time that the scheme has been put forward with its possible scope and implications. As this debate is designed to obtain reactions, we must now see how this would be received by hon. Members.
I must detain the House for two minutes to deal with the expenses question, because it is deceiving hon. Members to talk about a rise in salary, or about a subsistence allowance, if they are not told clearly how much the Chancellor of the Exchequer will take back from them at the end, and how much they will get eventually. Looking at expenses, we have to fit this scheme into the present method by which hon. Members claim expenses. At present expenses necessarily incurred by hon. Members are claimed and allowed for tax relief against their Parliamentary salary. All the various proposals I have outlined for relief of expenses, of which I have given several possibilities including the last one on subsistence, or of contributing towards


expenses incurred, have this in common: They provide a benefit which does not attract tax. On the other hand, they would have to be taken as reducing the amount which can at present be claimed for tax relief as expenses incurred out of the Parliamentary salary.
I want hon. Members to know this in the Chamber—not to talk about it outside and say that they did not get an answer—so that they have the scheme before them in its entirety. This is important when we want to consider the actual net benefit to hon. Members, and how it would vary according to the private means of the hon. Member concerned.
Shortening it, it would come to this, that for every additional £100 under any new proposal which an hon. Member might receive by way of contribution towards expenses, £100 of the Members' salary, which previously had been devoted to expenses, would then fall to be treated as salary. This is, alas, a salary subject to tax and the net benefit in the ordinary case would therefore for each unit of £100 be £100 after deduction of tax. The result would be that a poorer man, a family man in particular, who would not pay much tax on this, would get a much greater benefit from this suggestion than a richer man who would really get not very much out of it. That point has already been put by one hon. Member, but I wanted to make it absolutely clear in working out the result of the scheme.
So it is worth while hon. Members looking at these alternatives and reflecting that the last one could, in the case of an hon. Member honestly in need, and in the case particularly of an hon. Member with a family, result in a considerable extra allowance, amounting in fact to almost as much as that which has been proposed in other directions.
I conclude by saying that these are the sort of alternative methods and ideas—by no means comprehensive and conclusive because I do not want to detain the House too long this evening—which the Government have been considering. Some have attractions and some have drawbacks and disadvantages. We shall have to take the final decision on this matter in the light of views expressed by hon. Members themselves and also of

public opinion, which is sensitive to this issue and which no hon. Member would be wise to neglect. I do not say that an hon. Member would be wise to give way to public opinion, because I suppose we never do that as politicians; we stand up for our views and are as strenuous and rigorous in our attention to them as possible. But we have to take into account the good name of the Mother of Parliaments and of the House of Commons as a result of the joint action we may decide to take.
In this short speech I have not said anything about Under-Secretaries or about Ministers, because I think they will have to be brought in on another occasion. I will only say that it is crystal clear that the case of the Under-Secretaries needs very early attention. They are neither being paid enough nor are they getting adequate attention for their expenses. In the case of many Ministers of State, they are actually getting more by the combination of half their salary as a Member of Parliament than the Cabinet Ministers, who are so vastly superior to them in every way.

Mr. Frederick Lee: Could the right hon. Gentleman make those sentiments retrospective?

Mr. Butler: I certainly could not make them retrospective to a previous Administration, and I doubt if they could be made retrospective to the present one. I say nothing about Cabinet Ministers. The problems of the Under-Secretaries and the Ministers of State are those to which the House will have to give attention and which are having my constant attention.
I have purposely responded to my correspondents who wrote to me before I rose that I was not to come to a final conclusion, that I was to put myself at the service of the House, and that I was to put forward alternative methods for their consideration. That I have done. The Government will most carefully weigh the sober and impressive and human contributions made by our colleagues in this House, and we sincerely hope that the problem may be solved in the interests of the good name of Parliament, in the present circumstances, and in the name of the democracy which we all serve.

6.28 p.m.

Mr. Frederick Peart: I am glad that the Chancellor did not say that he was committed to any particular scheme and that he will keep an open mind on this issue. However, I hope that after he hears the arguments lie will reject a scheme which will give subsistence allowance to hon. Members who may be residing in their constituencies or in London. I am in a fortunate position in having a constituency which is also a beauty spot, so if I proposed having a holiday in my constituency, I can see how, if such a scheme were adopted, it would be open to abuse. I hope that the Chancellor will consider carefully the arguments put today.
I agree with so much of what has been said by previous speakers that I trust that my speech will follow the precedent that has been set. This is a House of Commons matter and we must consider what is good in the light of the House of Commons, what is in the best interests of our colleagues and what, in the end, affects the good of the nation.
I want to compliment the Select Committee, because I believe it has sifted the evidence and has presented the facts. If I may introduce one slight personal note, I have had three professions. I drifted into the scholastic profession, I was a soldier by force of necessity, and I chose a political life voluntarily.
In a sense I am a full-time politician. I make no apologies for that. I am proud to be a Member of this House. I am proud to be a full-time politician. I am unable to follow my earlier profession because I could not now teach full time in a school in any part of the country. Therefore, in a sense because of necessity, I am a full-time politician. Because of my experience here I hope I shall always have the privilege of being a full-time politician and not have to seek work outside to bring me extra financial assistance to enable me to do my job in the House.
This is a matter which goes beyond our own personal experience. It is something which affects the efficiency of the House of Commons. My right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, South (Mr. H. Morrison) has written a book, entitled "Government and Parliament."

He has been called "a modern Bagehot with a quiff" and he says that there is a great danger—

ROYAL ASSENT

6.31 p.m.

Message to attend the Lords Commissioners.

The House went; and, having returned—

Mr. SPEAKER: reported the Royal Assent to:

1. Telegraph Act, 1954.
2. Niall Macpherson Indemnity Act, 1954.
3. Swinton and Worsley Burial Board Act, 1954.

MEMBERS' EXPENSES

Question again proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."

6.42 p.m.

Mr. Peart: I was quoting the sentiments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, South in his recent book, "Government and Parliament." He suggested there was a danger that we would become a monastic institution. I agree that that is a danger which we, as hon. Members of this House, must consider. By being full-time Members here we tend, perhaps, to live apart from the rest of the nation and, because of that, our experience becomes somewhat limited. But that argument can also apply the other way. There is always the danger that an hon. Member, by fulfilling his obligations, by fulfilling his responsibilities, will be denied opportunities to go abroad and to contribute to any of those valuable Parliamentary organisations which indirectly enrich our Parliamentary life.
An hon. Member should not have to rely on sponsored trips abroad. He should be able to use his leisure, if necessary, to enable him to understand world affairs so that he can make his contribution here in this Chamber. That argument can also apply the other way. I would agree with many hon. Members on both sides of the House that there is certainly the main question, should we have full-time politicians? That is a very real problem. I, personally, believe it to


be rather academic because, whether we like it or not, many hon. Members on both sides of the House do a full-time job here.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: They have to.

Mr. Peart: As my hon. Friend says, they have to. If we look at the work of an hon. Member, we can see how the tempo has changed. The pressure of Parliamentary life is due to many factors—the polarisation of party politics, the Whip system, and the narrow balance of our political life in the country. Does this mean good government? Will such a system create a rigidity in our Parliamentary procedure? We see how the tempo has changed if we look at copies of HANSARD and compare the speeches made in this Chamber 50 years ago with those made today. In that early period there was the slow, measured, polished oratory compared with short speeches—made with staccato precision—today.
The changed tempo can be seen in the actual working of Parliament. It can be seen in the growth of legislation and the development of individual case work. Irrespective of political argument, the State interferes more than ever with the rights of citizens and, because of that, individual citizens call upon Members of Parliament to present their claims, if I may put it in those terms. We become the guardians of the citizens' rights and thus offer a check to bureaucracy.
Possibly case work can be overdone. There is a grave danger that Members of Parliament may become glorified citizens' advice bureaux. There is a danger that, instead of keeping abreast of political problems and legislation, hon. Members may become so involved in case work that an important side of their work is neglected. I still agree that case work is important especially if it helps Parliament directly to check bureaucracy. Whatever our political views or ideologies, we know that bureaucracy can exist in any system. Inevitably we must face the fact that the tempo of Parliament has changed and that the pressure on the individual Member has increased also.
This assembly does undoubtedly mirror the modern mechanical, machine age, the scientific age. In that respect

many hon. Members, in order to keep the Parliamentary machine working efficiently, must of necessity do a full-time job. That is the dilemma; how much time shall we devote to it? It is a difficult choice which hon. Members have to make. As I mentioned earlier, in a personal note, I had a profession which I could not follow by being a Member of this House. That always will be the dilemma which faces many of us; shall we do less here and seek to earn a living outside by doing work which may interfere with our efficiency in the Chamber? I am not saying that in every case it does interfere. I believe the hon. and gallant Member for Macclesfield (Air Commodore Harvey) rightly said that many hon. Members through their experience in business or professions outside enrich our Parliamentary life. But in some cases occupation outside could restrict the Parliamentary and political life of an hon. Member and the nation would have lost a very valuable servant.
I hope that we shall adopt the proposals of the Select Committee and allow hon. Members to make the choice. As has been stated today, even if the Report of the Select Committee is adopted, hon. Members will not be making money if they are doing a full-time job in this House. It will still be extremely difficult for hon. Members to fulfil all their duties and keep their normal family life going in the proper way. There will still be difficulties. Hon. Members are not pleading for some money which will give them riches, as some people think they are. That is not so. But it is important that hon. Members should be able to make a choice.
Lord Hailsham, who was quoted by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, gave some facts and figures which, I see, have been reproduced by the hon. Member for Solihull (Mr. M. Lindsay) in an excellent little book on Parliament. They show that every other Member of this House at that period when we had that debate was either a company director, a trade union official or a lawyer. I agree with Lord Hailsham that it is bad that we should have so much representation from one section of the community. No Member should be prevented from making that essential decision through force of necessity. If


he wishes to follow the honourable profession of a full-time politician by serving his constituents and the nation, he should be enabled to do so.
It has been said that Parliament is like a zoo—there is one of everything in it. The position is not quite like that, but I believe that the House of Commons should at least mirror the nation. We are a democracy, we can no longer go back to the system of Old Sarum and the pocket boroughs. We should see to it that our representatives do not suffer from nagging and gnawing poverty and insecurity which affects their efficiency as representatives of the nation.
This debate is important. It affects every one of us directly or indirectly. More than that, it affects the efficiency of the House of Commons and it really affects the future of democracy. I have been looking back at that classical writer on our Constitution, Walter Bagehot. whose opening words in his chapter on the House of Commons were:
The dignified aspect of the House of Commons is altogether secondary to its efficient use.
I hope that we shall bear that matter in mind because his words, although written in 1867, still apply today and have a bearing on this debate.
We are concerned really with the efficiency of Parliament. Bagehot mentioned five main functions of the House of Commons. They were as follows: first, the elective function. We are here to carry on the Queen's Government, to maintain a relationship between the Commons and the Executive. There is, too, the expressive function; we express the opinion of the British people on all matters which come before it. Thirdly, there is the teaching function. We are a council of men who come together, and we alter society for good or evil, for better or worse. The fourth main function is informing. As we know, it derives from that mediaeval conception of Parliament, whereby the Sovereign was informed of the grievances of Parliament; we inform the nation of the grievances. The last function is legislation. Today legislation is more important than ever and Bagehot's remarks applying with greater emphasis.
Despite all our great traditions, despite the great political machine which we have built up here in the House of Commons,

despite all our rules of order and Parliamentary conventions, it is in the end the personnel which is important. We must, as Lord Hailsham said, and as many other writers have stated, mirror our society. Therefore, no section of the community should be placed in any difficulty in this respect.
I come to my last point. I have stressed the fact that we are living in a Parliamentary democracy. I believe that in our democracy public opinion is mature enough to appreciate this position. The Chancellor of the Exchequer said that we must be sensitive about public opinion, but I believe that we also have to lead. If we feel that the Select Committee has presented the facts and has arrived at right conclusions, and if we agree with those conclusions, we have a right to say so, just as, if we disagree, as no doubt some hon. Members will, we have a right to express an opposite point of view.
I honestly and sincerely believe that my constituents and the British people do not want their public representatives to be placed in any financial difficulties because of the circumstances of their position. I believe that the British public do not want Parliament or Government to be impeded because their public representatives, through financial difficulties, have to restrict their activities in the House of Commons. After all, this is a matter of tremendous importance.
I know that certain sections of the Press sometimes snipe at Parliament. One need not mention them in too much detail. I should like, however, to quote a rather interesting passage from the "Sunday Express" which appeared at the time when the last increase was given. It was stated, in a "Sunday Express" editorial:
This is a question of the dignity, honour and independence attaching to the office of a Member of Parliament. It concerns the recognition which the nation is prepared to give to the men and women who have been chosen by the people to represent them.…
And no M.P. should be afraid to vote for the rise in salary. This is no personal matter, but a measure which will enhance the prestige of the House and increase the usefulness of all Members to the community they serve, long after individuals have passed on—or have been given notice to quit by their constituents.
I sincerely hope that "Cross-Bencher," who sniped at my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish) this week—he may snipe at me, I do not


know—will remember that editorial in his own paper. I hope that he will bear in mind that the efficiency of Parliament is of great concern. I should certainly like to invite him down here to talk to him about this matter. I should even be prepared to debate the issue in my constituency.
We must certainly give a lead to public opinion, and we must not insult the British public by assuming that they are immature. After all, Parliamentary democracy is on trial, as previous speakers—the Chancellor of the Exchequer and my right hon. Friend—have said. Parliamentary democracy was able to resist totalitarian aggression in a great crisis. Undoubtedly there are still political zealots who would undermine the fabric of our Parliamentary system, who attack it and who would wish to bring into being a monolithic State.
Parliamentary Government is something which all of us have helped to build up in our own humble way, and is something which goes right back into British history. It is something which offers the nation now, in this modern world, a tremendous dynamic; it inspires the Commonwealth and peoples abroad, by our example, to defend and to develop Parliamentary democracy. I go further. I believe that Parliamentary democracy can also rot from within. It can be corrupted, and there are tendencies which illustrate this danger.
I tried to portray this in a humble contribution to the "Manchester Guardian" some time ago. I think in terms of the growth of specialisation, the role of the experts, the idea that we should leave it to some other person. I see that danger in our wider political life, and it can be a danger here. It emphasises that we have to be more active and vigilant as Members of Parliament because of the role of experts and because the specialisation of our own social and economic fabric has meant the growth of the centralisation of government and propaganda. I think of television, irrespective of whether it is private or public enterprise. It can be a tremendous menace to objective discussion and talk. This growth of centralisation, along with the personalisation of politics, is something which can corrupt even our own Parliamentary discussion and practice.
In that sense it is important that we should have an active, vigorous House of Commons which is able to do its job, which is able to fulfil that case work I have mentioned, a House of Commons which has built up in its Members the efficiency necessary for that essential Committee work which has increased through the spate of legislation. It is a House of Commons which always must be vigilant, and even more so today in our modern world.
For that reason, I hope that Members will carefully look at the Report of the Select Committee not in a party sense but as something which really affects the efficiency of a great institution—an institution which has a tremendous impact on world affairs outside this assembly. If we consider the Report in that spirit, eventually we shall reach a decision. If we believe that decision to be right, we should have the courage to say so in no party sense.

7.0 p.m.

Sir Victor Raikes: I have no doubt that if I had been a Member of the Select Committee I should have supported the recommendations which it produced upon the evidence put forward, but nothing that I have heard has changed my view that the most honest way to tackle this question is by a fiat-rate increase rather than by the other methods which have been suggested.
I wish to make one point which has not been touched upon very much. We have talked a good deal about the difficulties which some hon. Members suffer. I want to call attention to our future entrants. There is not the least doubt that the cream of the younger men from parties on both sides dare not enter the House. For instance, there is the younger man on the managerial side, in his thirties. I believe that we need men of that age in Parliament. Such men may be married and have a child, with perhaps another on the way, and they may be beginning to build up a career. Any man like that who wants to enter public life does not want to make a fortune out of it, but he does not want to sacrifice his wife and family to live in penury for 20 years or more. Fewer men of that type will enter the House unless we have a considerable change.
The same applies on the other side, with the rising young trade unionists who


are just the type of men needed on the other side of the House—and on this side as well; I must not speak in any party sense. The young trade unionist has a decent job and is looked after well by his trade union. Trade unions look after their men a good deal better than do some public bodies. The rising young trade unionist has some degree of security. How can he come here to take a job which means that, at the end of it, if he is lucky enough to stay in the House for 20 years, he has either to hang on in ill-health in his old age without private means behind him. He can save nothing for his retirement, and then we get those tragedies which have appeared before the Committee of the Members' Fund.

Mr. Charles Pannell: If a trade unionist enters this House, on more occasions than not he has to resign from his job; and if he loses his seat he has to submit himself again to a ballot of the membership, against his successor.

Sir V. Raikes: I was assuming that he would resign his post, just as the young man in business, in many cases, would have to resign his job; and he might have less chance of getting it back than the trade unionist. Be that as it may, we have to look at the future of Parliament even more than at the troubles of existing Members.
I listened closely to what the Chancellor said about the proposed alternatives. While he was speaking, I had in my mind the whole time the question. "Will any of these alternatives encourage the type of younger men we want to see coming into the House on both sides in future years?" I cannot imagine that the subsistence plan would arouse the slightest enthusiasm in the heart of any man. I do not deny that this subsistence plan would be of some slight help to a certain number of the poorest Members of the House. It would be an undignified alleviation, but it would be an alleviation.
What man or woman, among the brilliant people whom we have on both sides, who would like to enter Parliament would come on the present £1,000 a year, and maybe a subsistence allowance, especially if he or she happens to live in London? Although I am not a London Member, I know that there is some difference between London and country Members, but I do not believe

that any scheme that differs in its treatment as between hon. Members is likely to be acceptable. The London Member has certain advantages. On the other hand, the number of constituents who have to be looked after at all times is colossal. I must say that the subsistence scheme seems to be a bad one from the start.

Mr. Frederick Willey: Would the hon. Gentleman agree that there would be unfortunate differences between provincial Members? Some provincial Members, like myself, live in London because we think that we can serve the House better by doing that. It would make an unfortunate differentiation between ourselves and other Members who prefer to live in the provinces.

Sir V. Raikes: I appreciate that. I am not attacking my right hon. Friend the Chancellor. I am only too pleased that he has put forward these alternatives at all, but the more we look at the subsistence scheme the more impossible it will appear. My right hon. Friend's other alternatives were variations of an expense allowance in addition to the basic salary. Some of these variations would be worse than useless.
Suppose that we decide to be very careful not to upset the public but that, after all, there ought to be free telephone trunk calls, free secretarial expenses and perhaps even free meals, to some extent, in this House. That is not only undignified but something which does not help the poorest men in the House. It does not help the man who is trying to run two homes and a family on £1,000 a year if he can have a secretary out of a pool when, in any case, he would much sooner have the money than a secretary and do the work himself in order to keep his homes together.
One must face this plainly. A secretarial allowance would be convenient, but it would not be of much help to improve the conditions of the men I am thinking of most. There is one alternative which I do not much like because I should prefer a flat increase, but if the Government do not want a flat increase I think that it would be worth while to consider saying that we should treat the £1,000 a year frankly as a salary in future instead of as Members' remuneration, and that we should have, say, £500 as expenses if they can be claimed over and above that.
I do not say that that is ideal, but I think that it would work. It would mean that a man's £1,000 a year would be fully taxed, so far as he was taxable, and that he would be able to claim up to another £500 for expenses. That is something which is not entirely out of the picture, in comparison with the business world. It is possible. However, if we are prepared to do that, I do not know why we are not prepared to go out for a flat increase.

Mr. R. E. Winterbottom: In his consideration of the £1,000 and the £500, has the hon. Member taken into account the fact that the Select Committee has already indicated that most hon. Members have, as a consequence of their duties, expenses amounting to far more than the £500 a year that he mentioned?

Sir V. Raikes: I had that in mind, but if one takes £750 as an average, as every hon. Members knows quite well, the people who charge the least expenses are the people who are hardest up. Do not let us forget that, as it is very easy to do so. As a matter of fact, if one has plenty of private means, one can have a large house instead of a modest flat and a full-time secretary instead of a part-time one; but I should have thought that £500 is probably a reasonable sum for the expenses of a Member of Parliament in pursuit of his general duties, and that it would not be too far out.
I should have preferred a flat increase, and I say quite frankly to my right hon. Friend that I believe that a number of my hon. Friends and the Government have been unduly scared by the reactions of popular opinion. I have been in this House quite a long time. I voted in favour of the increase from £400 to £600, because I thought it was right to do so, and I supported the increase from £600 to £1,000, and at present I enjoy the biggest majority in my whole Parliamentary history. I do not believe that the reaction of the public would be a very great one, but if we make it a General Election issue, we shall get every sort of bargain between people and every sort of pressure group.

Mr. R. A. Butler: May I ask my hon. Friend what justification he has for saying that in any section of my speech there

was any hint of scare? Secondly, if he is so ready to attack, without very much examination, one suggestion to which it is good to get reactions immediately, I must remind him that I put forward other suggestions. I should also like to get further reactions on the first one, namely, an expenses allowance, to which he referred.

Sir V. Raikes: I should like to make it quite plain that if I gave the impression that my right hon. Friend was showing a spirit of scare in his speech, that was the last thing which I intended to do. What I meant to say, and what I thought I did say, because I am generally reasonably accurate, was that I thought that both the Government and a good many hon. Members of this House had been rather unduly, perhaps I should say, alarmed or troubled, by the original popular reaction. I would never accuse my right hon. Friend of being either scared or a scaremonger.
If my right hon. Friend asks me to refer to the two suggestions, I say, in regard to the first proposal—not the subsistence allowance, but the other one— that I think it is a possible alternative, because we have got very many interests in which a salary is paid and a reasonable amount is also allowed for expenses which must be tied up with the work involved. I think it could be done, but I think the expenses would have to be kept down to a reasonable limit, because I do not think we could have people saying that, because they could charge expenses above their basic salary, they were going to live at the Dorchester, instead of living where they are.
I think that is fair enough, and that it is a possible alternative, although I wonder why the Government think that perhaps the public would prefer it to the flat-rate increase. If the public do prefer it, to be quite frank with the House, I think we should be slightly better off if we could have a salary of £1,000 a year and £500 for expenses which we do incur.

Mr. Mellish: Would not the hon. Gentleman also agree that the public, particularly in London, are aware of the fact that, in every trade union agreement, there is always a London allowance?

Sir V. Raikes: Yes, that is so, but I do not want to be drawn into that argument. I think we should be wise to consider that.


if the Government really feel that they prefer the first suggestion. It is an alternative which might meet the situation.
I am not very happy about the pensions scheme proposal. I think that a non-contributory pensions scheme is bound to bring unpleasant reactions, whatever the cause, but I think that, if we have an increase in salary, whether by means of the Chancellor's first suggestion or by means of a flat increase, it is worth considering, not merely with the Government Actuary, but perhaps with one of the big insurance companies in the City, whether some sort of insurance scheme could not have been devised on the basis of a contribution of £100 or £150 if we are to have approximately £1,500 a year, and that also the £78.000 now in the Members' Fund might well be used to cushion it for the older Members, who have little time in which to contribute towards it.
Having said that, I would add that I believe we are now at the crossroads. I was brought up in the old order. The whole of my background and the whole of my public life is what people used to call the old order, and I am not ashamed of it, but I know that, in this modern world, the whole conception—[Interruption.]

An Hon. Member: Shut up.

Dr. H. Morgan: Shut up yourself.

Mr. Jack Jones: On a point of order. Is it in order for the hon. Member for Warrington (Dr. Morgan), as he has done in recent months, continually to interrupt speeches to which other hon. Members wish to listen?

Dr. Morgan: Further to that point of order. May I say that I always have a great respect for the Chair and for this House, but I think that, on occasions, when an hon. Member is making a ridiculous speech, it is up to someone to say so frankly.

Mr. Speaker: I deprecate, as I must always, excessive interruptions. Occasional interchanges are, I think, inseparable from the conduct of our debates, but hon. Members should confine them to the very minimum

Sir V. Raikes: I take no offence at what the hon. Member has said. I belong to the old order, but the whole Victorian conception of the work of Parliament, the hours of Parliament, the conditions of people who are elected to Parliament, have changed. I am not afraid of the new order, provided that we have the cream of the new order on both sides of the House, but if we stay where we are and do nothing, I prophesy that the Parliament that will be seen in 20 years, or in a decade, will be a Parliament of elderly men, of worn-out men, of incompetent men, and of men who are prepared to take a small salary here because they can get nothing anywhere else.
Worse than that, it may be a Parliament which will include the "spivs," the "smart Alecs" and the tax evaders, who will say, "Oh, yes; if I go to the House of Commons, I can get something on the side." I do not want that kind of House, and I am convinced that, if we act with some courage now, on the lines of one of the proposed alternatives, we can avoid that, and that we shall have a Parliament in future which will not be unworthy of the traditions of the past. The path of progress is so often the path of human understanding.

7.20 p.m.

Mr. R. R. Stokes: I want, at the outset, to support what the hon. Member for Garston (Sir V. Raikes) has just said about what, I believe, is the almost universal view of the House, that whatever is granted should be a flat-rate increase. We should not fiddle about with subsistence allowances and the rest. I will deal a little later in my speech with what the Chancellor said.
At the beginning, I would answer the Chancellor's question to the hon. Member for Garston by saying that the reason why I object to subsistence allowances is that they are of their nature riddled with difficulties, are most unattractive and are very often discriminatory. We want to avoid discrimination. When I read this Report, I said to myself "Thank goodness the Inland Revenue will not be concerned with what the Members' expenses are. They have decided that. Now we need not argue about it any more." I have dealt with a large variety of people who send in expenses accounts. It is an absolute nightmare to think of the Mother of Parliaments


having to work out what hon. Members put in in the way of hotel vouchers, etc. It is outrageous that it should be suggested. I say that with the greatest friendliness to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I should not like him to think that I was in any way aggressive. I understand how he is placed.
My hon. Friend who opened this debate said that if some outside body, and not a Select Committee of this House, had been put on to adjudicate what we should have, it was in his opinion more than likely—and I entirely agree—that it would have suggested that we should have a great deal more. I would not hesitate to accept that view. After all, the Members who are so well off that they do not need it need not feel that there is any obligation on them to take it. The Chancellor said that he knew people who did not take all their salary. If there are people like that, that is all right. They can be dealt with in that way.
Let me say something about what the hon. Member for Ashford (Mr. Deedes) said. He was to a great extent under a delusion. Possibly he misread the early part of the Report without looking at Appendix VI. He fell foul of what, I think, a number of members of the general public have fallen foul of, in that he conceived the reason why the average expense is £750 is that many hon. Members put in a great deal more. If he studies the matter arithmetically he will see that that is impossible. In fact, if he looks at the Schedule he will see for himself that 66 per cent, of hon. Members put in £650-odd. It is not true that the £750 figure is swollen much by those who claim the full amount. Of course, it is increased from £650 to £750, I agree, but it is not true that it is appreciably swollen by the number of people who claim £1,000, which is a very small percentage of the House. I make that point to get on the record what the facts and figures are.

Mr. Summers: Some of us feel that the figure £750 is misleading because it implies that that is an average of the amount of the salary spent by hon. Members. It is quite clear that it is the result of spending money outside the House which enables that average to be reached.

Mr. Stokes: That may be so. I do not dispute it. It is not true to say that a

higher percentage of people put in the top figure, which was rather the impression which the hon. Member gave me. Before tackling the Chancellor, I want to say something about Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries.
I have never been a Parliamentary Secretary, but I have been a Minister. I am delighted that the Select Committee has reported favourably on both. I hope that some of the idiocy which prevails in Treasury Regulations will be removed in the administration of expenses. I am not talking about personal expenses, but expenses in the conduct of the nation's business and in the best interests of the nation. I want to give examples of things that happened to me which I considered absolutely crazy. On one occasion we were engaged in building up a very considerable plant, which was one of top secret. Many millions of money were involved. We put in some very hard work and concentrated effort, and we managed to save about £1½million. I gave a little party to the people who were mainly responsible, and it cost £37 10s. I had to pay. I thought that was absurd. Any higher business executive would have charged that amount to his expenses account, but not a Minister of the Crown.
Same hon. Members may recall that I held three offices in a very short time. In one of them I had 12 regional offices. I am a great believer in the party spirit. Not having very much brains myself, I like to get other people to do things, and one way to do that is to "jolly" them along. The first time I saw that some of these officers were a little backward in coming forward I gave a party. I had to pay. It was not very much, and it is not that I minded paying; but it made me begin to reflect why some Ministers did not seem to get round in that way. Surely that is not in the best interests of the nation.
I assure the general public that Ministers do not career around in their motor cars from Timbuctoo to Land's End. I remember in my very early days being invited to a swell show at Sadler's Wells and to have supper on the stage afterwards with the present Queen. I naturally went in my Ministerial car. It was a very wet night. I do not mind saying that I took a very attractive lady with me. Two days later I got a bill for £2 15s. for using my official car "for wrong purposes." I am not complaining


in any way, but it seemed to me that this arrangement was really cockeyed.
I have finished my plea that Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries should be encouraged to carry out their jobs. I say it in all seriousness. We do not want them to give unnecessary cocktail parties, but when they are dealing with people who are really doing important jobs, a bit of relaxation should not have to come out of a Minister's pocket. I hope that after this little bit of ventilation somebody in the back room will pay attention and will amend the regulations.
Now I come to the Chancellor. I always think that on these occasions first reactions are probably the most accurate. Therefore I will read to him what 1 put down as I listened to him speaking. I came here full of hope. I thought he was probably glad to be back and to have something cheerful to tell the House. This is what I wrote down about my reactions to his proposals: "Disappointing, niggling, unsatisfactory, discriminatory, in effect almost amounts to a means test, unacceptable." I am trying to help the Chancellor, because he knows how important first impressions are. I classify these proposals as typical back-room Treasury stuff, and the fact that the Chancellor has accepted this brief at all—I am being charitable to him—can only be explained by the fact that he has been so preoccupied with much more important affairs that he has not had time to give the matter the serious consideration that we all think it deserves.
I am not saying that the Select Committee's Report is necessarily perfect. I personally would admit that, so far as the pension scheme goes, the matter should perhaps be examined. There may be a case for making it partly contributory. What we want—and I am sure I am right, having talked to a large number of people about this matter in the past few weeks—is enough to live on with certainty, and not a lot of nonsensical argument about whether it has been spent or not. I dislike the Chancellor's proposals because I think they are terribly undignified. I do not see why Members of the Mother of Parliament should be worse treated than all the offspring in the various parts of the Dominions.
I want this put on record. I know these facts are in the Report of the Select

Committee, but unfortunately the public do not read the Report. It seems absurd to me that the Chancellor should dare to propose what he has proposed, when a Member of Parliament in Canada gets £1,450 a year plus £725 a year tax-free, when a Member of Parliament in Australia gets £1,400 a year plus £320 to £720 tax-free and £2 10s. a day when in session, and a Member of Parliament in South Africa gets £1,400, £700 of which is tax-free.

Mr. Clement Davies: The right hon. Gentleman gave the figure correctly as it appears in the Report, which states what a Member of Parliament in Canada got at that particular time. It was, as he said, £1,450 plus £725 expenses, but it has now been increased this year to £3,570.

Mr. Stokes: I am much obliged to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for correcting me. I ought to have been aware of that, but I am afraid I was not.

Mr. Beverley Baxter: May I interrupt the hon. Gentleman to help him with his case? In Canada, in addition to the amount stated by the right hon. Gentleman, Members get free secretarial assistance and free travel right across Canada.

Mr. Stokes: And Canada is a very big place.

Mr. Geoffrey Wilson: The Members' families get that concession too.

Mr. Stokes: I am not asking for all that. I have not got a family, to start with. Let us be serious about this. I know that one sometimes tries to treat a serious subject in a spirit of levity, but this matter is troubling Members a great deal. Here we have our opposite numbers in Canada, Australia and South Africa far better off than we are, and, as the hon. Member for Southgate (Mr. Baxter) says, on top of the figures that I have quoted, they get free secretarial assistance, free travel and other allowances.

Mr. R. A. Butler: Will the right hon. Gentleman remind me of the country in which Members get £2 10s. a day?

Mr. Stokes: In Australia, when in session. That is in addition to the £1,400 a year and a sum varying from £320 to £720 a year tax free.

Mr. Butler: Is the right hon. Gentleman, therefore, saying that one of the suggestions of a similar kind which I have put forward is grossly undignified?

Mr. Stokes: No, I have not come to that suggestion. I dislike the idea of subsistence allowances. I would not mind if the £2 10s. were not paid to Australian Members. I am not insisting on that. But I do not see why the Members of the Mother of Parliaments should be so ridiculously badly off compared with their opposite numbers overseas.
If I were asked my view about secretarial expenses, I would say that I have always wondered since I came into this House—not that I would have made any use of any secretarial assistance, because I am differently arranged—[Interruption.]—I mean that I have got other conveniences—why we cannot find a way of doing it without so much time being spent by Members writing letters. I am on a Select Committee, so that occasionally I have to come here in the mornings, during what are regarded by many people as forbidden hours, and I am horrified to see so many Members of Parliament sitting in the Library and elsewhere pushing pens. Of course, they must deal with their constituencies, but they would be able to do so in half the time if the secretarial arrangements were right, so that they could devote more time to the much more important work of this House and to studying the affairs of the day, reading the newspapers and so on.
The Chancellor asked me about one of his proposals. I will tell him why I think it is wrong, quite apart from the main principle about the subsistence allowance. As 1 said earlier, I thought when I read the Report, "Thank goodness the Inland Revenue have dealt with this thing. They have said that the average expense of a Member of Parliament is accepted by Inland Revenue at £750 a year." What is the use of messing around with sums varying from £100 to £500 which do not half meet the point? It does not seem to me to be the right way to deal with this matter.

Mr. R. A. Butler: I thought the right hon. Gentleman suggested £500 in one of his proposals.

Mr. Stokes: No, I do not think I suggested anything of the kind. I certainly accept the £1,500 proposal; I think

a case has been made out for it. The Inland Revenue have declared that £750 is necessary on the average to a Member of Parliament in the shape of expenses to enable him to carry on his affairs as a Member. If the public could only have this explained to them and if the newspapers would headline it in my way—if only I had a newspaper—there would not be a soul in this country who did not understand the matter.
Many Members are left with £250 a year on which to keep themselves and their families. No person to whom I have spoken would think that a Member was adequately provided for on £250 a year. We ought to make the people understand that fact. It is nothing whatever to do with the cost of living. It is the actual expenses outside living that amount to £750 a year, and in the present situation all that is left to many Members of Parliament is £250 a year to keep himself and his family. The poorest paid worker in the organisation with which I deal would not complain if the matter were explained to him in that way. Unfortunately, it has never been put to people in that way. If people understood that being a Member of Parliament was the worst paid job in the world, there would be less difficulty about it.
I appeal to the Chancellor's sentiment. I do this in great seriousness. Just imagine it being possible for a Select Committee of this House to be able to report this state of affairs to which some of the Members of Parliament have been driven: some have sold or mortgaged their homes; the savings of others which they had before entering Parliament are now exhausted and debts are accumulating; others have sacrificed pension rights which they had established in companies or firms in whose employ they were before entering Parliament; others are not able to afford lunch or dinner in the dining room of the House of Commons, and use only the Tea Room. Gracious goodness me, if the great British public read that and raise one finger in protest against the main proposals of the Select Committee, all I can say is "God help them."
What I ask the Chancellor to do, when he has had time to give the matter the thought which we think it deserves, is to


come forward in an unniggardly, non-discriminatory way with a scheme which will allow us to hold up our heads in pride because we belong to the finest House of Commons in the world.

7.40 p.m.

Mr. Rupert Speir: It is a great honour to follow the right hon. Member for Ipswich (Mr. Stokes), but I feel that it will become apparent to the House that I cannot indulge in "slap and tickle" in the way he can. I think it only fair to warn hon. Members of that at the outset.
I speak as one who during the last General Election announced that if I was elected to this House I would take a cut of 10 per cent, in my Parliamentary remuneration. Fortunately for myself, I was wise enough to say that that would last only during the period of the country's financial emergency. When Her Majesty's Government came forward with a proposal to give the judges a lax-free allowance of £1,000 a year, I thought that the emergency had come to an end. Accordingly after the lapse of two and a quarter years I resumed my £1,000 a year remuneration. I shall not detain the House by explaining the reasons which decided me to take a cut, but at the time I took my decision I was not under any illusion that a sum of £900 was anything like adequate for the expenses necessarily incurred by an hon. Member of this House in carrying out his Parliamentary duties.
It has been widely said during this debate that the public should be educated about some of the costs incurred by hon. Members. I myself represent one of the largest constituencies in the country and it is far away from London. It may surprise hon. Members to know—it certainly surprised me when I worked it out—that in a year my car is either driven by myself or by others for something like 18,000 miles. The cost of that alone amounts to a total of something like £600 and after that has been deducted from one's Parliamentary remuneration, it means that one is left with £7 or £8 a week to cover all the other many necessary expenses which are incurred.
Even though 18,000 miles a year may sound an immense distance to cover, the fact remains that the electors in many parts of my constituency still do not see me from one year's end to another. I do

not say that they are any worse off on that account, but one cannot get round these immense constituencies unless one is constantly on the go, and it costs me something over £600 a year in order to cover my vast area. There must be many other hon. Members in the same position. I sincerely hope, therefore, that the Government will be able to agree by and large to the recommendations contained in the Report of the Select Committee.

Mr. Mellish: Well said.

Mr. Speir: There is one point which I wish to take up. I agree with the Chancellor when he says that a non-contributory pension would be difficult to defend and I think that some modification of the pension scheme would be advisable. I am fortunate in that I have no commitment in the way of a family, and personally I am slightly better off than some other hon. Members, although I do not pay Surtax. But I think something ought to be done fairly soon in this matter, because there must be many hon. Members who are now suffering very acutely.
I wish to point out, as has already been mentioned, that assuming that the Government carried into effect the recommendations of the Select Committee, hon. Members would not be forced to avail themselves of the extra remuneration if their conscience did not allow them to do so, whatever amount might be granted. I myself, by a stroke of the pen, took a cut of 10 per cent, in my salary for two years and it is easy for any hon. Member to go to the Fees Office and to say that he wishes to reduce his salary by a specific amount.
Personally speaking, my conscience would not allow me to take any form of increased remuneration during the lifetime of this Parliament. I consider that I offered myself to the electorate well knowing more or less what the conditions would be and therefore I should abide by the conditions regarding remuneration as they were when I entered this House. However, that does not prevent other hon. Members, if their conscience allows them to do so, from availing themselves of any increase which may be thought desirable. I repeat that if an increase does come about, it is up to individual hon. Members to decide for themselves whether they will avail themselves of such increase or not.

7.45 p.m.

Mr. Jack Jones: I wish to follow the hon. Member for Hexham (Mr. Speir) in his statement that he offered his services at a 10 per cent, reduction of the present salary. That was fair enough. But he did not tell the electorate that he intended to live on the amount which was left. It is the amount on which we have to live that forms the subject matter of this debate. As time goes on the hon. Member will learn that even on the amount of his private income, plus the £900 left after he accepted a 10 per cent, cut, he will be strained to do the job as his constituents will demand that it shall be done.
I wish to make a confession. I am one of those who did not make a return to the Committee when it asked for information on this question. It may rightly be asked, "Why not?" Well, I was rather proud about the thing, and I thought that the evidence was such that the Government surely would have sufficient knowledge of what was going on to make it unnecessary for any hon. Member to produce evidence to bring about an increase in salary.
I could have added to the story told by those who had been hardly put to. I make no apology for speaking as one of the ordinary working Members of this House. Before I came to the House I had a job which was probably more highly paid than any other working man Member in this House. I came into this House from an extremely highly paid industry with my eyes open. Some hon. Members opposite—not many, but some —may say, "Why did you do it?" There are still people in this country—and, please God, there will continue to be— who desire to serve their fellow men despite the effect it may have upon their personal income and home. It was a desire to serve my fellow men which prompted me to leave what is probably one of the highest paid jobs in the steel industry in this country and come to this House for £600 a year.
Financially, I was sadly disillusioned. It worked out at a payment of £11 12s. a week to live in London and do what was right and proper at home. I say to the Chancellor that there is not an hon. Member of this House, whether he lives in London or the provinces, who can put his hand on his heart and

honestly say that £1,000 a year enables him to do all the things that we as Members of the House of Commons demand should constitute the standard of living which we want for all British people.
I claim no credit for it, but I happen to be a staunch teetotaller. I do not smoke. My family are grown up and married and off my hands. In that respect I am in a fortunate position. I have no young children to support. My children are on their own feet, so to speak. Yet I can assure the House that despite that, I cannot carry on. The hon. Member for Esher (Mr. Robson Brown) knows the job which I formerly did and the standards which are aspired to and attained in that industry. I have gone to the trouble of letting him see my banking account for a considerable period of time. If any hon. Member opposite is opposed to the proposals of the Select Committee, and I do not think there are many who are, I am willing to let them see my pass-book and my financial dealings to prove what I am saying.
That little house has gone. The £500 in War Savings has gone. I do not moan. I am not complaining about it. All I am saying is that it cannot go on like that, otherwise we shall put ourselves into the position of having to offer ourselves to some of the things that we oppose.
It is suggested that hon. Members should find alternative work. I do not know of a steel works within 80 or 90 miles of London where I could offer my services at week-ends or for a few hours during the day. Indeed, having regard to the type of argument that I used to advance at the Dispatch Box, I do not suppose that a works would look too kindly on an application if I made one. But I do not know. I will say this about the steel employers of this country. If I went to my old employers, to the chairman of the board of directors, and put my cards and financial situation on the table, he would do something to see that things did not continue like this.
What the hon. Member for Garston (Sir V. Raikes) has said is true. If this situation is not altered, this House, this Government and this country will deteriorate. Do not let us make any mistake about it. This is a time when the most


sincere and most able brains ought to be gathered on the Floor of the House for our collective benefit industrially, economically and socially and from the point of view of military security. At a time when the best is demanded, we are encouraging the worst by doing nothing about the future of Members.
The trade union question has been stressed. I make no bones about it. My trade union is regarded as a non-political trade union. It is not particularly concerned with political activities, although the members know how to vote at election times, which is very important. Most trade unions today have a waiting list of Parliamentary candidates. We cannot find many men in my industry who have the necessary brains and ability to do this job. [Interruption.]It may be "My God‡" My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington (Dr. Morgan) keeps on making statements. He may not like the things that I am talking about, but they happen to be the facts. In that industry there are not many men who are particularly anxious to come to this House. [Interruption.]Might I appeal to you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, to ask my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington to keep order. It may well be that he is not anxious to listen to what I have to say, but he has a positive and obvious remedy if he does not wish to do so.

Dr. Morgan: So has my hon. Friend. Walk out‡

Mr. Jones: The position is that not many people aspire to be put on the Parliamentary panels. Why is that? It is because the brains and ability that they have can be much better employed at even ordinary levels in the workshops in that great industry. It may be suggested by some that we do not want them here, but I think that most hon. Members and most of the Government will agree that we ought to encourage the best types of men and brains to come here.
What is it that the Select Committee are asking? It is that the job shall be so financed as to make it possible for people to enter the House and feel secure in carrying out their duties as Members. Is that asking too much of a nation such as ours? I am sure it is not.
There is the idea that the electorate will be upset. The average wage in the

steel industry is just under £12 a week. Can it truthfully be said that anyone can do our job in London, and do it correctly, with a part-time secretary, meeting expenses in connection with filing, keeping records and postage, having a small flat and doing things in a reasonable way, and have left an equivalent of that average wage of £12 a week? If any hon. Member can tell me that that is possible, if he will see me afterwards I will give him what I have left in the bank for the information. In fact, I will sign him on as a part-time director of my affairs to save me losing the remainder of the savings which I gathered together when I was in the industry.
Unless the Government do something, the situation can lend itself to some exploitation, even by the trade unions. It is not the first time that I have said things with which my colleagues do not agree, but I am not worried about that. I am convinced that the situation lends itself to exploitation by some of the unions themselves. There are degrees of political standing in the various unions. There are unions who would wish to have increased representation here. There are those who would be prepared to spend more than a fair and reasonable amount in order to get increased representation. In other words, there would be competition in buying seats, and that could lend itself to a state of affairs which no real democrat would wish to see in this House. I say to the Government, quite seriously, that unless something is done to give equity of opportunity for every trade unionist and, indeed, for every aspirant to the great honour of representing a constituency, the situation may be serious.
I represent a constituency in which I was born. This is a little emotional, but it is true. I can go down the side streets there and people say to me, "You do not need to come and canvass us. We knew your parents." That sort of thing makes us proud to be Members of this great assembly representing good people in a decent way. It is for the purposes of maintaining that standard that I make my plea. I do not make it as someone who is unduly worried. As I have said, I was able to put a bit by, and that has helped me out. However, on behalf of those who are not so fortunately placed, and those who want to follow us, and so that there shall be a higher and better


standard in the House to enable us to maintain the dignity, the decency and the good name of British democracy in the Mother of Parliaments, I make my plea to the House, and in particular to the Chancellor, that the Government should do what it ought to do.

7.57 p.m.

Mr. Spencer Summers: This is a difficult enough debate in which to intervene after the remarkable speeches which have been made. It is all the more difficult for one to intervene when it is known that one's views are necessarily more personal than party and that I am one of the lucky ones, as the hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr. Bowles) described them, and hold the view that the recommendation of the Select Committee ought not to be implemented now. The House is usually generous—I have never received anything but generous treatment—and I hope that hon. Members will believe that I am trying to distinguish between objective opinion and personal bias. I hope I need say no more than that.
I wish to express a point of view which has not yet been put in the debate. I know for a fact that it is shared by many of my constituents. I believe it is the origin of the Chancellor's approach. I believe that some of these ideas coincide with the thoughts that lay behind the Government's approach today.
I thought it was a little unfair of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Ipswich (Mr. Stokes) to talk about the "proposals" of the Chancellor. The Chancellor said quite plainly, as I hope he will bear me out, if he is able to listen—I hope I may have his attention for one moment.

Mr. R. A. Butler: I have not missed a single word of my hon. Friend's speech. Our object is to try to get the reaction of the House. As my hon. Friend is about to defend me, I shall be only too delighted to listen to what he has to say.

Mr. Summers: I hope that my right hon. Friend will believe me when I say that my shaft was intended for his neighbour and not for himself.
It seemed to me very unfair to describe the information which he gave us as

"proposals." I think I interpret him correctly when I say that he wished the House to be in possession of all available information so that collective opinions might thereafter follow based on information and not on superficial knowledge. I did not understand that proposals of any kind had come from the Government Front Bench.

Mr. Butler: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. He is correct in his interpretation. I might say that, being a very old hand, I expected people to read into what I said all sorts of things which were not there. Nevertheless, I thought it was worth taking the risk because this is an open debate.

Mr. Summers: I want to make it plain that I accept the evidence of hardship given by hon. Members on both sides of the House. That point need not be laboured. But there is widespread hardship in many households outside the House which is at least as great as that to which hon. Members have alluded. We should all be well advised to approach the question rather from the point of view of the future of Parliament than of the present position of Members who may or may not be here after the next General Election. Most speakers have, in fact, adopted that approach.
Something has to be done. The hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. Jack Jones) said that this situation cannot go on, and I accept that. But what we are really considering is whether, in the middle of 1954, the recommendations of the Select Committee should be implemented. I submit that there are cogent arguments for saying that this is not the time for them to be implemented, and I believe that it is because of some of those arguments that the Government have made their statement that there are other claims upon public resources which, from a human point of view, are at least as urgent as those of which we are speaking today.
Hon. Members have said, "We hear that story every time the subject of Members' salaries comes up. There will always be claims, and if that is to be the paramount argument nothing will ever be done to improve our position." Ever since the war, until the last two years, we have had inflation of a virulent kind. We have been climbing up and up,


trying to keep pace with the conditions of life. Latterly, we have seen much evidence to suggest that we have reached a position of stability, and only at such a time is it possible to sort out social priorities. We all know that the cost of doing anything for Members is trifling, but the repercussions of so doing may be widespread, and it is these repercussions, which people believe to be important, which have prompted the Government to say, "Not now; other people first." If we accept the fact that we are reaching a period of somewhat stable conditions we should deal first with the most urgent claims, both from a public and a human point of view, and not put ourselves at the head of the queue, however cogent the arguments may be for saying that this position cannot continue.

Mr. Lewis: Will the hon. Member tell me of any body of people in this country, other than Members of Parliament, which has not had some amelioration of its conditions or improvement in its salaries, wages, professional earnings or pensions since 1946, and how many people have to meet the costs and expenses incurred by Members of Parliament. If the hon. Member wishes, he can include such people as local government officers or military pensioners. Can he tell me of any class of people which has not had some amelioration in its conditions since 1946?

Mr. Summers: The hon. Member is asking that our so-called occupation shall, be compared with that of other classes of people to whom he has referred. The Select Committee's recommendation, which I imagine he supports, is that Members of Parliament shall be singled out to have made good to them the depreciation in the buying power of money which has occurred since 1946. I think I remember the Select Committee's Report sufficiently well to say that it calculates that a fraction under £1,500 is the present-day value of the £1,000 a year when it was first introduced. It was for that reason that it sought to justify the figure of £1,500. In other words, it said that if people wanted Members of Parliament to be in a position comparable to that in which they were when the £1,000 was given, £1,500 was the appropriate figure.

Mr. Clement Davies: I am certain that my colleagues on the Select Committee

would all agree that that was not what influenced us. We merely stated it as a fact, and nothing more.

Mr. Summers: Very often the facts can only be interpreted as justifying the recommendations. As the right hon. and learned Member was Chairman of the Select Committee, I naturally accept what he says, but he must permit me to put an interpretation upon the Report which he did not put upon it.

Mr. Lewis: The hon. Member has said that Members of Parliament should not put themselves at the head of the queue. All I am trying to point out to him is that every person in the country except Members of Parliament has had an amelioration of his conditions since 1946. I ask him to quote anyone else who has not.

Mr. Summers: There are scores of people living on pensions and fixed incomes who have not had any amelioration since 1946. They may not be in employment, but there are scores who have had no improvement in their position, because the cost of living has been rising all the time.
I believe that it was because of the repercussions which would follow a substantial increase in our salaries, comparable to the depreciation in the buying power of money, that prompted the Government to take the view that this is not the psychological moment to carry out the Select Committee's recommendations. They have therefore put forward other schemes to deal with the position. I want to make it clear that I do not like their alternatives. I believe they amount to doing the right thing in the wrong way, the right thing being to make up our minds that this situation cannot continue.
The question of when it is right and proper for the conditions of service in this House to be improved need have no bearing upon a General Election, or upon the arguments which parties may advance. It is purely a matter of timing. Some time ago all hon. Members accepted the principle of equal pay, and so far as I am aware this had no effect upon the arguments advanced at the last Election and I do not see why this question should do so at the next Election. The argument for improving the position of Members is justifiable, but this is not


the time to do it. It is upon those grounds that I believe that we should foe justified in declining to accept the Select Committee's findings at this stage.
The need to do something to make sure that Parliamentary democracy works is a justification for setting up the Select Committee, but it has no bearing on the question whether we should do something in 1954, any more than it had any bearing when hon. Members opposite had it within their power to do the same thing towards the end of their term of office. Parliamentary democracy is a very long-term affair, and to say that this moment of time is the vital and imperative moment when this sort of thing must be done, otherwise democracy will crumble, is to lose all sense of perspective. I agree that the position cannot go on much longer, but this is not the moment to act, and I believe that there are many other hon. Members who think that other claims should come before ours.

8.9 p.m.

Mr. S. N. Evans: I am very sorry that the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Summers) did not emulate the generous approach of his colleague, the hon. Member for Garston (Sir V. Raikes). There is an old saying, "They laugh at scars who never felt a wound," and, by Jove, it is true in connection with this matter. The British people are beginning to look upon the ducking and diving which has surrounded this question with growing amusement, tinged with contempt. It is not their wish that Members of Parliament should suffer penury in the discharge of their duties.
I am very disappointed that the Government have not taken the bull by the horns and accepted that part of the Select Committee's recommendations that advocates a plain, fiat salary of £1,500 a year. I cannot myself subscribe to the idea of non-contributory pensions. Neither am I in favour of any of those suggestions that have been made today. I accept the bona fides of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and we appreciate the agreeable way in which he put forward his suggestions, which I shall not call proposals; but this is only playing with the problem, and it is inexcusable.
There is very serious hardship among some of my Parliamentary brethren. I

intervene in the debate as one who has activities and interests outside this House of an intellectually satisfying and financially rewarding character. It was because of my knowledge that some of my colleagues are having a very bad time that I felt compelled, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, to catch your eye and to speak in fairness to them. There are at this moment county council physical jerks organisers who are getting more money than we are. Purchasing agents of mental institutions are getting more money than we are. This will not do.
The Government should have the courage of their convictions. They know that this hardship exists and they know what the inevitable consequences will be. What is the amount of money involved? Three-fiftieths of id. of every £ this House levied in taxation last year. It is really not good enough for the Government to play about with this issue in the manner they are doing. The Prime Minister is the man to settle this. The Prime Minister's position in this country is unique. By his indomitable courage and matchless oratory in what was probably the darkest hour of British history, he has not only won for himself an historical future but carved for himself an enduring place in the respect and affection of his contemporaries. He could settle this matter. He has only to get up at that Box or go to the microphone and say, "The need here is great not only in terms of human hardship but in terms of the future of the House."
It has been said in the debate already that the quality of Members of Parliament is bound to decline if this parsimonious treatment of Members is continued. I do not want to stress the humanitarian aspects of the matter too much. I would rather that some of my colleagues who have experience of them related what is happening to them and their wives and children. I can only assume that it is modesty that keeps them glued to their seats.

Mr. Lee: Pride.

Mr. Evans: But what is the position? It is just as important that the quality of those who sit on the Opposition Front Bench should be high as it is that that of those on the Treasury Bench should be high. I think it is important that the men who sit on the Opposition Front Bench should be men of intellect, experi


ence and integrity. When a man, on the transference of political power, walks out of the Government but remains a Member of Parliament, he is dropped from £5,000 to £1,000 a year, a savage, cruel, almost barbarous cut that should not be perpetrated any longer. The Government really should grasp this nettle, if it is a nettle, although I do not think that the electoral consequences would be detrimental to a Conservative Government.
As my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Lewis) has just asked, what other section of the community has had no cost-of-living bonus since 1946? The argument is, "This is not the time. We know we ought to have this increase, but this is not the moment." When will it be the moment? We are not supposed to tag along like tin cans tied to electoral posteriors. We are supposed to give a lead. We are the nation's leaders, and the function of leadership is leading, giving a sense of inspiration and purpose which make ordinary people extraordinary. That is our job, and we shall be lacking in courage if we do not do it. I accuse the Government of lack of courage in not saying these things.
If this is not done, what is to happen? Inevitably the House will be peopled by the wealthy, independent of their Parliamentary salaries, and by others who are financed by outside organisations. Will that be a welcome development? Will it not be that such Members will inevitably tend to think in terms of the interests of the financing organisations first, before their duties as Members of Parliament? I say that this is a very grave risk indeed. The whole strength of our democracy, that has to maintain itself in the face of great threats in the world, is that this House is truly representative of every income group and section of the nation. The greatness of the House does not lie in the wisdom to be found here. It lies in the fact that the House is representative of every nook and cranny of the Kingdom and every section of the population.
Some of the letters that I have read in the Press will not bear examination. They talk about Parliament being a part-time occupation. Members of Parliament cannot dodge in and out of employment like cuckoos in a cuckoo clock, getting a job for a week at Easter or Whitsuntide, and a bit longer in the Summer Recess. This

is a full-time occupation, and it is going to stay a full-time job, because I doubt very much, barring a war or an earthquake or something of like exceptional character, whether either party will have a majority sufficiently large to enable any considerable number of Members to be away at any one time. Probably 50 or 75 will be the largest majority in the next 10 or 20 years, so that, if something very exceptional and unfortunate does not happen, Members of Parliament will inevitably be glued to the House.
So we are going to be professionals, whether that is a good thing or not. There is a lot to be said for professional politicians, and I speak as an amateur. I would remind the House of W. G. Grace, G. O. Smith and Archie Maclaren. There have been some good amateurs. Of course, amateurs are sometimes a bit costly. I think there is a lot to be said for the professionals, and when I look across the Atlantic at the Government of business men, I think there is a lot to be said for the professional politician. I therefore believe that it is necessary for us to take into account that service in the House will very largely be of a full-time character.
I want to associate myself with the remarks which have been made about the need to attract young people into the House. This House is getting a bit old, and the second haif of the 20th century will bring new problems for which we want new men with new ideas. How shall we get them here on the present pitiful salary? Salary? In my time certain words seem to have changed their meaning. One is "democracy" and another is "income." How can anybody describe this £1,000 as income? The Select Committee said that £750 of it goes in expenses. Who can live on a fiver a week?
The alternatives which the Chancellor of the Exchequer suggested might easily lead to malpractices. At any rate, there would be a temptation if we had to come here to clock in. Members of Parliament clocking in? What is to stop us from clocking in and then clearing off again? Who knows whether I am in Wednesbury or in London? This suggestion will not do. Much the cleanest and straightest thing to do is for the Government to say to the country, "This £1,000 a year is


totally inadequate for Members to do the job properly, to live decently, to maintain their families in Sunderland, or Newcastle, or Cardiff or wherever they are, and at the same time to perform Parliamentary duties in London, which means staying at a hotel, or at any rate somewhere, for four nights a week. These people need £1,500, and we should give it to them." When I went to stay at my hotel in 1945 it was 17s. 6d. for bed and breakfast. Now it is 32s. 6d. If I had not been fortunate to have these other activities of which I have spoken, I should have had to clear out to some dosshouse in Camden Town.
I have not been very proud of the benches opposite this afternoon. Hon. Members opposite are dodging the column. They have simply been looking for excuses. Peter Wentworth, about 360 years ago, said we came into this place not to be time-servers but to serve God and the people. I quote that from memory. He said we came not to be time-servers and rumour feeders. But if men see their only road for economic advancement as political advancement, will they not be compelled to be time-servers?
I am all in favour of the party system, which is the best system which mankind has yet evolved for the conduct of its affairs. I think it needs a few heretics, and I could name one, but modesty prevents me from doing so. A lot of the things which we contribute to the debates on the Floor of the House are previously discussed in Committee Room 14. Both parties have their meetings upstairs, and often the real battle takes place at those meetings because then, away from the public gaze, we can get out our daggers and broken bottles without inhibition.
It is very important that these debates upstairs should be vigorous. But how can they be vigorous if men see political advancement as the only way to satisfy their economic needs—in other words, an assurance that they will be in the next Labour or Tory Administration? Will not these men temporise? These men would have to think through their stomachs, and to think through the stomachs of their families—families with perhaps three or four children. These things have to be taken into account, because they play a very important part.

I want to see this House vigorous and I want to see a good deal of independence and freedom of expression within both parties.
Does the House know that two of the country's delegates to the Council of Europe at Strasbourg in recent years could not have gone had I not lent them the money? That is true. Both of them paid it back. But what a thing to happen—that men should be reduced to this level.
Referring to the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr. Jack Jones), I would not agree that the trade unions will take all the seats in the House, but in any event I am not afraid of the trade unions. I am afraid of other, less respectable organisations getting hold of people, putting their names on their notepaper and making them dummy directors, giving them £200 or £500 a year, as the case may be. There will be a strong temptation for men faced with domestic responsibilities, heavy expenses in London and heavy expenses at their homes in the provinces, to succumb to blandishments of this kind; and that is what I want to guard against.
The humanitarian aspects of this matter are very great, and I understand them, but there is something here even more important, and that is the quality of the people we shall get in the House. I therefore say to the Government, "Have done with this ducking and diving. It is unseemly. There will be no loss of votes. The people of this country do not want their legislators on the cheap. The British people are as smart as paint; they know the temptations to which men are subjected when they are reduced to penury, because many of them have themselves experienced penury."
I therefore tell the Government that I do not lake the suggestions which have been made from the benches opposite. They are an evasion. They are trying to give the same thing without appearing to give it. I say to the Government, "Have the courage of your convictions and do the right thing by the House of Commons, by the men who serve in it now and the men who will be coming after the next General Election. By doing so you will incur no electoral odium—because I fear that that is the animating thought in your mind."

8.29 p.m.

Mr. John Arbuthnot: The hon. Member for Wednesbury (Mr. S. N. Evans) suggested that the Government and the Chancellor of the Exchequer were considering the matter from the point of view of electoral odium, but electoral odium does not enter into it at all. He also accused my right hon. Friend of lacking courage. But by far the easiest thing for my right hon. Friend to do would have been for him to say, "This is what you have asked for. I will give it." It is because my right hon. Friend is a man of courage and realises that there are far greater implications behind this matter than the actual sum involved that he has taken the line which he has adopted today.
A far bigger issue is involved than the amount of money which might be paid to hon. Members. We are being asked to increase the emoluments or the expenses of Members at a time when the nation is just coming through an economic crisis, at a time when we have old-age pensioners on 32s. 6d. a week, and when it is of vital importance for the future health and prosperity of the nation that the over-pressing burden of taxation should be reduced.
This is the time at which we—the Mother of Parliaments—the leaders of the nation, are being asked to increase our own expenses allowance or to increase our own emoluments. The repercussions of that throughout the country from the point of view of other people who are on fixed incomes and who are in greater need than Members of Parliament will be enormous. People in the lower income groups are very hard up against it at the present moment, and I feel that the Chancellor would have every cause to complain if he felt so inclined at the inconsistency of—

Mr. F. Willey: I think that the hon. Gentleman is dealing with a crucial point in the eyes of himself and his hon. Friends. That is the question of time. What has happened since the time when the Select Committee was created? After all, the Government took the initiative in proposing a Select Committee, and the House set it up.

Mr. Arbnthnot: No, the Government were asked to set up a Select Committee by hon. Members on the benches opposite. Do not let us have any difference of opinion about that.

Mr. Willey: That surely was the time when the decision ought to have been taken. The Government could then have taken the view that the time was not opportune. That has now gone by default.

Mr. Arbuthnot: The Government were asked to set up a Select Committee. [Interruption.] I want to make my own speech in my own way. Other hon. Members who take a different view have not been interrupted by those of us who profoundly disagree with them, and I hope that they will extend the same courtesy to us.
I feel that at this moment it is vital for the future of this country that the example of economy should be set. If the example to be set in this Mother of Parliaments is to be one of raising our own salaries or giving ourselves a bigger allowance for expenses, the consequences throughout the country will be disastrous. The Chancellor has brought this country round from an economic point of view. One has only to look at the increasing value of the £ on the black market abroad and the greater freedom of choice which is available at the present moment, to see the results of some of the steps which my right hon. Friend has taken. If we applaud my right hon. Friend for doing what he has done, it is not right that we should at the same time urge him to do the very opposite in raising our own salaries, and set the pace for fresh demands.
There is one special case to which I want to refer, that of the junior Ministers. I believe it is so cast-iron that something really must be done. Junior Ministers are not allowed to earn anything in any other way.

Mr. Lewis: Nor are the coal miners.

Mr. Arbuthnot: The coal miner at toe coalface is earning £1,000 a year.

Mr. Lewis: rose—

Mr. Arbuthnot: Junior Ministers are deprived of their other earnings. Furthermore, they cannot set their expenses—and they have just the same expenses as we back benchers—against the £1,000 Member's salary; they can only set them against £500. To allow a position of that kind to continue seems to me to be the height of absurdity.
There seem to me to have been two major causes beyond the control of the Select Committee which weakened the case that they put forward. In saying this, I would emphasise that I am in no way criticising the Committee. The first weakness in the case is that the evidence brought before the Committee could not be the subject of cross-examination. The series of figures submitted may well have referred to different things or different circumstances as far as different Members were concerned. By the nature of the Committee, it was impossible to probe the figures as thoroughly as one would like to do and as one would have been able to do in evidence before a court of law.
The other weakness is that average figures were inevitably produced. The figures for a Member in London are totally different from those of a Member in a constituency outside London. The circumstances of their respective expenses do not correspond. To average the figures and say that the average expenses of a Member of Parliament are £750 a year is largely meaningless, because of these different circumstances. In that way one can, perhaps, read too much into the Report of the Select Committee.
We have heard a great deal about hardship, and I have no doubt that there is hardship amongst many of our colleagues. That hardship can be brought to an immediate end by the Member concerned. Every one of us knows perfectly well that at least half a dozen other people would like to take his place. [HON. MEMBERS: "Cheapjack."] If any Member feels that the people who are anxious to come here in his place are worse than he is, that is a presumption which few of us feel.

Mr. Douglas Houghton: Why not let one come in your place?

Mr. Arbuthnot: I am not one who complains at the hardship. If I felt like that, I would take the necessary action. It is extremely important that we should look at this from the point of view of what the future of this place will be. There are two things that we can do. Either we can increase our salaries or give ourselves increased expenses, in which case there is a danger of this place attracting more professional politicians than it has; or we can encourage people

to develop outside interests, which would keep them in touch with what is going on in the outside world.
There is a grave danger of this House getting out of touch with the conditions in the world today. I recognise as well as anybody that there is a problem, and I believe that the real solution is to modify the procedure of the House so as to make it possible for people to do outside work and to keep in touch with events.

Mr. Walter Monslow: Before I came to this House, I was an industrial officer and I had to work in six counties. One day I would be in Newcastle, the next day in South-port, another in Manchester, and another in Wigan. Is the hon. Gentleman seriously suggesting that I could follow that work here? It would be physically impossible.

Mr. Arbuthnot: I am not suggesting that the hon. Member could follow that particular work, but I feel that the proportion of those Members who have outside interests and connections and are in touch with the day-to-day happenings of the world outside should be maintained, and we should not allow the House to become composed entirely of professional politicians. I am perfectly certain that the trade union movement is looking for young and promising people who will be able to uphold the banner of trade unionism. The Press are looking for people able to write, and there are many other directions in which outside contacts can be maintained. The value of the person with those contacts to this House is very great.

Mr. H. Hynd: rose—

Mr. Arbuthnot: I have given way several times and I have suffered a certain amount of interruption. I do not think I should give way again.
I believe it is not beyond the ingenuity of this House to devise a procedure which will enable the best brains to keep in touch with the normal course of life outside this place and at the same time give their services here. It means a modification of the procedure of the House, but I am quite sure that a Committee could produce a scheme that would get over that difficulty.
A strong case has been made out for increased financial help, but in view of


all the circumstances I believe the greatest service we could render to the nation in this matter would be to recognise that though that case has been made out the best method of dealing with it would be for us for the time being to forego it.

8.44 p.m.

Mr. Clement Davies: I hope the House will forgive me for intervening in this debate, but I want to say that the view that has been taken by my colleagues and myself is that we were asked by the House to undertake a task and we did our best to carry out that work. We have produced the Report, and it is for the House to express its views upon it. I rise tonight not to advocate this Report in any shape or form, but I think it might be of assistance to hon. Members if I explained a few matters which have arisen during the course of this debate.
In the first place, may I thank all those who have spoken for the very kind references made to my colleagues and myself. I should like to say at once that anyone who had the honour and privilege of presiding over the Committee day after day, as I had, would realise that one could not have better, more conscientious or more hard-working colleagues. They were drawn from both sides of the House and represented all shades of opinion. I am deeply grateful to them for all the work they did, and for the tremendous assistance they were to me in drafting this Report.
We were asked to find out the facts about three matters: One was the Members' Fund, the second was the position of Members today with regard to their expenses, and the third was what was the position in the other countries, either Commonwealth or foreign? I think there was a misconception in the minds of some hon. Members, not merely confined to those who are not on the Government Front Bench, that all we were asked to do was to ascertain the facts and present those to the House. But that is not so. When we are instructed by the House to find facts, we are also under the Standing Orders of the House expected to make our recommendations, and that is why we made them.
There can be not the slightest doubt that on the facts as they came before us the amount that has been paid to hon.

Members, and is being paid today, is insufficient. There could be not the slightest doubt about that. I want also to say this, that nearly 400 Members were good enough to take me into their confidence and put their financial position as plainly as they could before me. I am glad to say that even I do not know which individual Member submitted any particular case. Each one of them had a code number. The code number was known to the clerk and I could ask him for any assistance, but I do not know the name of a single Member who sent information. So far as my colleagues were concerned, they did not even know the code number, they had only the excerpts from the particulars sent in.
The description of what we found on reading all those reports has been set out by us in paragraph 27. Reference has been made to it already, but I want to refer once more to what we set out there, namely—
In their answers to the questionnaire, a considerable number of Members have made it clear, beyond any doubt, that they cannot, on the £1,000, afford the expenses which they deem necessary for carrying out their Parliamentary duties efficiently and, at the same time, maintain a reasonable standard of living for themselves and their families.
That is a general, true description from the facts as they were presented to us. We then go on to give certain instances, with which I need not trouble the House, because hon. Members can read them for themselves. However, I think I am entitled to use this description, the financial condition, and the worries in which some hon. Members find themselves today in meeting their responsibilities to their families can only be described by the use of one word, grim.
Then, having found that as a fact, what recommendation were we to make? What then lay before us? Not merely the present condition of hon. Members of the House but, as has been pointed out by Member after Member, what kind of House would we have in the future; who would be tempted to come here when the facts were such as we had found them? This is not only the Mother of Parliaments, this also should be the pattern of Parliaments, and it ought to be attracting men of the highest quality from all walks of life. We set out in paragraph 54 what we felt was required.
In the considered judgment of Your Committee, the payment made to Members


of Parliament should be of such an amount as to enable men and women from all walks of life to enter this field of public service without finding the financial sacrifice for themselves and their families too great Your Committee believe that the enduring strength and authority of Parliament depends upon the quality of its Members. Qualities of temperament, character, ability and experience are needed. The House of Commons must also be representative of the people, and should not be drawn from certain sections only; the field of choice should be wide. Few would support the idea of a House of Commons composed principally of full-time politicians in the sense of men and women cut off from any practical share in the work of the nation.
Then comes the following:
It would be no less damaging to the country if the House were to become a place where Members could not give of their best because of a dominating need to escape from financial pressure.
That describes the attitude, the approach and the opinions of my colleagues and myself. We did our very best to describe what we felt was necessary in order to attract, as we say, the finest men from all walks of life to represent the country.
As one hon. Member has already said very rightly, and we were very conscious of it, democracy is on the defensive. To my mind it has been more on the defensive during my time than it had been for a very considerable time. When I was young I thought that the battle of democracy had been won, but we have had to see democracy fighting through two world wars in order to maintain the independence of the people who are represented in democratic countries. Therefore, the highest quality is needed among Members of Parliament.
That being so, we then had to consider how adequate was this £1,000, which is not remuneration, not a salary and not a recompense. We had in our minds the whole time the words with which recommendations were made to the House on this subject as long ago as 1911, when conditions were very different, by Mr. David Lloyd George who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer. I must point out that conditions then were different not merely because of the difference in money values. As I said in an intervention earlier today, we merely mentioned those figures because there was the fact, but the composition of the House at that time was entirely different from its composition today. Nevertheless, it was felt

at that time that an allowance or a grant should be made in order that people might be enabled to come into the House.
I want to refer here to one or two leading articles in "The Times." I must say here and now that I felt on reading them and on considering them with great care, as naturally one would do, that the writer or the two writers, if there were two, had not read the Report and had just come to a conclusion on certain matters in the Report which they glanced at and then written the articles. They pointed out the danger that may arise from the wrong person coming into this House, whatever that may mean. To us the real damage might be done in quite the other way, in that men or women who ought to be in the House might be kept out because of the present circumstances.
The next question that we had to consider was what became of the £1,000. We found that in 1946 or 1947 the expenses of a Member of Parliament, as allowed by the Inland Revenue, came to about £500, which is 50 per cent, of the allowance that was granted. Incidentally, one must point out, first, that the Inland Revenue very rightly treat Members of Parliament strictly. Secondly, the only expenses that the Inland Revenue will allow are those which are wholly and exclusively and necessarily spent in the performance of Parliamentary duty. If the expenses do not come within that definition the Inland Revenue will not allow them. Now we are told that the average had gone up from £500 to £750. There is this also to be pointed out, that that £750 did not comprise all the expenses that Members of Parliament had incurred in what the individual Member of Parliament regarded as necessary for the purposes of his duty, for example, expenses of entertaining in this House.
I shall have to come back to this because of the suggestions made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, so I may mention here that while individuals vary they also vary very much because of the differences in constituencies. The London Member will have the advantage of free telephone calls. The country Member does not have that advantage, but the London Member—as we saw from the evidence put before us by the London Member—has to do vastly more entertaining than the Member from the Provinces. Every hon. Member who is married knows this, and even those who are


not married know of it, because they have to send someone else to an engagement in their place. Especially has that been so in the last two Parliaments in which the majority has been so narrow and the Whips so strict.
It may very well be that an hon. Member has an important engagement in his constituency which has been arranged days or weeks beforehand but he cannot go to it. What does he do? He turns to the one upon whom he can always depend—he asks his wife to go. If he went himself he would have his free ticket, but he has to pay for his wife's ticket and to pay for everything with regard to that function. What is more, that is not allowed by the Inland Revenue authorities as an expense, so the £750 does not really cover all the expenses which a Member has to undertake. It only covers what the Inland Revenue regards as expenses "wholly, exclusively and necessarily" spent in maintaining his position as a Member of Parliament.
All kinds of suggestions were put before us, and we have set them out fully. They included the same suggestions as have been made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer today. We considered them, not at one meeting, but at several meetings. We went through them and some appealed to us very strongly. We have set out what they were, but we came to the conclusion, as I have pointed out, that constituencies differ. The position in an urban constituency is very different from that in a large rural area. The position in a London constituency is different from that in a Scottish or a Welsh one. Individual tastes and individual management are entirely different.
Having gone through all that, we said that there was only one thing for it, that was to make a straightforward, simple rise of £500. We should let the hon. Member himself or herself spend that in the way the Member decides is the best way. He or she knows far better than anyone else how to husband the small resources with which he or she has to carry on this very important, this highly honourable, privileged position of representing the people and maintaining a position which will command respect amongst them. That is our explanation why we make this straightforward, simple suggestion, leaving it to hon. Members to deal with the matter themselves.
I am surprised at the reference by the Chancellor to the Members' Fund. I was instrumental in persuading other hon. Members and the Government of the day, when Mr. Baldwin was Prime Minister, to start that Fund. It was as far as we could get in those days, and I have been one of the trustees ever since that time. It is the most pathetic Committee on which I have ever served. Old Members of this House, men whom I have known and respected, and who have carried on because of their pride and position, pass away, and we receive the sad news of their death. Then it may be three or four months later there comes an application for assistance from the widow which is subjected to the most rigorous means test.
All we could give in those days was £250 for a man who had broken down in health and £150 to his widow on his death. Deducted from that was any bit of other income they had. That was the position then. We came to the House and said that we have had some very hard cases and we asked for a little more latitude to deal with them. The House altered the position and we have carried on since.
There was a movement to ask the Government to set up this very Committee. We as trustees went to see the Prime Minister with regard to the condition of that Fund. It is true that we have today in the Fund a sum amounting to £78,400. But we pointed out in the statement which we laid before the Prime Minister that as soon as a General Election came, speaking from experience of previous elections, the chances were that the expenditure involved in making these small grants would be greater than the income.
We also felt, and this too was included in the statement to the Prime Minister, that the amounts we were paying to these people were insufficient. We suggested raising them by the small sum of £50 for men and £25 for their widows. At once, to use the usual words we found ourselves "in the red." The expenditure exceeded the income. Naturally my colleagues and I considered the position was quite unsuited to meet the case of men or women who had served this House faithfully over a number of years.
As the House knows, ultimately we decided—and I might mention that we were moderate and restrained in our


action—that after 15 years' service a Member might receive a pension of £500. The chances were that in 15 years he would have had to fight at least four elections. After 10 years he might receive £350, and again he would probably have had to fight at least three elections.
Then we argued that leaving it baldly in that way would not meet the case we had in mind of a man who had served this House and reached an age when it would be impossible for him to get another post or to earn his living in another way. During his years in this House he would not have been able to put by any savings— how could he? In many cases, as we knew from the evidence before us, men had sacrificed the pension they would have received had they not become Members of this House.
We said, "Very well, we will lay down these terribly stringent conditions. A man may come here at 21 and may then serve for 19 years, but he does not count for pension for the whole of that time. He will begin to count for pension only after he has passed 40. Even then he will not get the pension unless he serves for 10 years. If he leaves the House at 55 or is broken down by that time, he cannot get anything until he reaches 65." Is that not moderate? That is not being generous. Those are the conditions that we laid down.
We then said, "What is to happen to the man who breaks down?" Let us take the case of a young man who comes in at 21 and is here until he is 42 or 43 and then breaks down. I have known it happen. We said, "There is the Members' Fund. We will use that." We said that we would ask the House to raise the Parliamentary allowance from £1,000 to £1,500 and we hoped the House would agree to double the contribution which is made, increasing it from £1 a month to £2 a month.
Besides the case of the man who has broken down, there is the case of the man of 55 who has now left the House, having served his 15 years from 40 to 55, and is not allowed a penny piece. Where is he to get a position at 55? Until the pension arrives at 65, there is the Members' Fund. I must confess that I was rather surprised that that was the position. We have made it as clear as we can in the Report.
Ought the pension to be contributory? I think that everyone would like to make it contributory. That is the regular thing. In nearly every case of a pensionable post, whether it is the Civil Service, ordinary public service or a company, the pension is contributory.

Mr. Lewis: The right hon. and learned Gentleman has made a slip. That is not true in the case of the Civil Service. The Civil Service pension is non-contributory.

Mr. Davies: I am sorry. I agree. However, is there any position in any walk of life comparable to our position here? A man comes in here at any age —he may be young, he may be middle-aged, or he may be old—and nobody knows how long he will remain here. He may be here a very short time. He may be fortunate, like myself, in that I have been here for 25 years. Nevertheless, at any moment one's constituents can change their minds. Believing in democracy, as I do, I should certainly say, "I agree with you. I cannot complain." Could anything be made to work on such a basis?
Suppose a Member comes here for five years and pays his contributions for five years, and is then thrown out. He may then say, "I never want to see that place again." In all other cases, he is entitled to ask for the return of the money which he has contributed. Yet it may be that five years later he changes his mind and comes back to the House. He will then have to find the money again and pay it back to start the pension scheme operating again for him. This sort of thing is almost impossible to work out.
We found that it was necessary today to allow Members, so that they might meet their expenses as Members of Parliament, a sufficient sum so that they would be enabled to continue the work of the House without the financial pressure upon them being too great, and we decided that it would be necessary to give them £1,500 per year. If there has to be a contribution, then that £1,500, as I am sure all of us would agree, would have to be raised, and that is why we link the two together. If a contribution has to be made, then every Member of this House would have to reconsider, or would wish to reconsider, the figure of £1,500.
Why did we not do that at that time? Not only did we feel that it was almost


impossible to work it on a contributory basis, but we felt that it would be more honest to the public and the House and to everybody else to make it non-contributory, because, otherwise, we would be pretending that we were paying it out of our own pockets when the money came from the Treasury before we could pay it out. It was a much more straightforward system than any contributory one. These are the explanations of the matters into which we were asked to inquire, and these are the reasons why we made our recommendations.
There is only one final point. The attention of the House has already been drawn to what is happening in other Parliaments, both in the Commonwealth and in foreign countries. We have set them up, but what I am perfectly sure both sides of the House would agree we all desire, and what is essential for democracy, is that the representatives who come to this House should be of the best of their kind, ready to serve their country devotedly in every way, and without having, all the time, the fear of being in financial difficulties.

Mr. Scholefield Allen: Before the right hon. and learned Gentleman sits down, may I point out to him that, although he made reference to the Members' Fund and pointed out the sums that would be paid to former Members or their widows, I do not think he made it clear that, in many cases affecting this side of the House, the Members' Fund gave nothing at all until the Member concerned had been a Member for 10 years?

Mr. Davies: I assumed that the hon. and learned Gentleman would know that. There is also this further point. Under the new proposal, we ask for a certain amount of latitude so that a Member need not have been here for 10 years, but that we can make a grant if he has not been here for that period.

9.13 p.m.

Mr. Geoffrey Bing: I feel I should be expressing the feelings of all of us in all quarters of the House if I were to begin by expressing to the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Montgomery (Mr. C. Davies) the thanks of the whole House, to him and his Committee, not only in regard to its

Report, but because this Report, in his case, is the culmination of work which the right hon. and learned Gentleman has done quietly and unobtrusively in regard to the Members' Fund.
I should like to turn now to the arguments addressed to the House by the hon. Members for Dover (Mr. Arbuthnot) and Aylesbury (Mr. Summers) and the hon. and gallant Member for Macclesfield (Air Commodore Harvey), because they were the three hon. Members who opposed root and branch the proposals of the right hon. and learned Gentleman's Committee.
Like the hon. Member for Dover, I am one of those people who are at times part-time. I am, like him, a part-time worker. I have an opportunity, as many of us have, of earning an income independently of the House, but I think the hon. Gentleman would agree with me that, every time we do that, we always have at the back of our minds the fact that, when we are away from this House, there is somebody else who is here doing our job. It is all very well to say that Members ought to be half-time, but Members can only be half-time when other Members are double-time, and, not only that, but they are the Members who are put to extra expense.
If I am pursuing my career at the Bar, I cannot be serving on a Standing Committee upstairs, but there is somebody else-who, perhaps, has to come up from his constituency in order so to do. There is somebody who is not able to have a meal at home, but has to buy a meal out, and, therefore, every one of us who has the advantage of being part-time ought to reflect to himself that he is only doing so at the expense of his fellow Members.
The hon. Member for Dover referred to various professions which could be followed on a half-time basis. I agree. He mentioned journalism. One can be a Member of this House and write a column for a national newspaper, but that is not the same as having representative journalists in the House. The representative journalist is a reporter on a country newspaper or a sub-editor. We have only the specialist sort of journalist. Exactly the same can be said of other professions. We cannot have a representative lawyer in this House. We can have a practising barrister, but we cannot have a country solicitor.
The same is true on the trade union side. Most unions do not allow a national officer to be a Member of this House, but it is possible for that to happen; but if the trade union officer is on a district basis, he cannot be here. He cannot be a shop steward and be here at the same time. The doctor or specialist in this House cannot have the intimate connection that a doctor has with everyday attendance at his surgery or practice, say, in the North of England. If the House is to be representative of the professions on a part-time basis it can be so only in that way. We cannot say that the House is representative simply because we have a few specialist lawyers, a few specialist doctors, and a few specialist trade union officials here.
Three quite different points of view have been expressed in the debate. The first, and the majority view, was expressed by those who are supporting the right hon. and learned Gentleman and his Committee in their Report. The second, which was almost solely advanced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was that some alteration in the remuneration of Members was necessary but could be done in a different way. The third point of view, quite a different one, was expressed by the hon. Member for Dover, the hon. and gallant Member for Macclesfield and the hon. Member for Aylesbury. It was that the Committee's Report was good but that this was an inopportune time to put it into effect. From those three points of view the House has ultimately to make up its mind.
I think the hon. Member for Aylesbury answered his own speech before he made it, because in an interruption he said that the Members who spent £750 were only those who were not living on their salaries. Does anybody suggest that that is not a necessary and proper expenditure for a Member of Parliament? What the hon. Gentleman was saying in effect was that only hon. Members fortunate enough to have outside sources of income could do their jobs properly.
The hon. Member for Dover answered his own argument as he went along. The strongest argument that he put forward against what he was advocating was what he said in favour of the junior Ministers. I entirely agree with every word he said in regard to them, but if one is to have

Parliamentary democracy, a junior Minister in a Committee must be faced by a Member of the Opposition who is equally well briefed and who has made just as profound a study of the Bill as has the junior Minister in charge. The Member of the Opposition has not the Civil Service behind him, so he has to give his time only in the Committee but in preparing his material. How can we have democracy if we say that a junior Minister must receive a larger sum than at present, while the man who opposes him and has to produce balanced arguments against him can get on well enough on his present salary?
The hon. Member for Dover went on to say that there was a simple way out, and that Members ought to resign if they could not afford to live on their salaries. That is a simple way out for us all, and it is true that none of us is here because he is compelled to be here; there is always somebody to take our place, and we cannot complain in the same way as other people. But I do not think that the hon. Member for Dover saw where his argument was leading. He was saying to the electors, "You shall only elect somebody who can support himself in Parliament out of his private means. Choose him from the Labour Party or from the Conservatives, but you must choose him from a certain social class in society." That really is not a very valid argument.
His other argument was that the position of old-age pensioners should be dealt with before we dealt with Members' salaries, and that the people would not understand our action if we dealt with the one thing before the other. What we are really concerned with is the efficiency of the Parliamentary machine. There cannot be justice for old-age pensioners or anybody else if we so arrange Parliament that it is entirely unrepresentative of the people. The danger of the present position is that the sumptuary test proposed by the hon. Member will come into operation, and Members will resign if they cannot afford to live on their salaries. There are hon. Members on both sides of the House who are not contesting the next Election, possibly for those very reasons, and if the process continues we shall ultimately have a House chosen from people who, just because of that element of wealth, may not be the most suitable persons who view these


problems as sympathetically as they should.
In my constituency I made no concealment of the fact that I occasionally do some legal work and make some money outside Parliament. I have had many letters from individual old-age pensioners, and, so far as I can recall, practically every one of those letters has contained a stamped and addressed envelope. The old-age pensioners, at least, appreciate the position of Members of Parliament. It has always struck me that it is the people who are the least well off who appreciate more than anyone else the difficulties and troubles of those who try to represent them.
I want to deal very shortly with the arguments of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He began by saying that an argument had been put forward by the hon. and gallant Member for Macclesfield that this was not the time to raise salaries.

Mr. Pannell: My hon. and learned Friend will appreciate that the Chancellor quoted the hon. and gallant Member for Macclesfield because he was the only Member who had cast a dissentient voice against the proposal of the Select Committee. The Chancellor had no other Member to quote.

Mr. Butler: It was not only for that reason that I quoted my hon. and gallant Friend. It was also because I happen to be well aware of the views of many of my right hon. and hon. Friends. I do not want to exaggerate or under-rate their arguments, but I pride myself on knowing what they think.

Mr. Bing: I am grateful to my hon. Friend and to the Chancellor for intervening. The House appreciates the courage of the hon. Member for Dover in expressing an unpopular point of view with a force and vigour which should have been adopted by others who take the same view; it would have given a more rounded view of the opinion of the House if they had done so. But it is a most mistaken argument. I do not suggest that the Chancellor is cowardly. I think that the hon. Gentleman the Member for Garston (Sir V. Raikes) was right when he said that this was a cowardly type of approach for Parliament to take.
What we are concerned with is getting an efficient Parliamentary machine. A shipping company that is in financial difficulties does not decide that it will not employ any officers in its vessels. We, for our part, want Committees such as the Estimates Committee and the Public Accounts Committee to be properly manned. Increasing Parliamentary salaries has not corrupted the Commonwealth. The world situation is the same the world over. We do not assume that the Parliament of Canada is undermined or corrupted because it has doubled a salary that was already in excess of ours of what ours would be even with the proposed addition. I hope the Chancellor will not be over-affected by that argument.
The Chancellor wants to do something, but something different from what the Select Committee proposes. He said first that he did not believe in the pensions scheme proposed by the Select Committee. Of all the most pressing problems of Members, surely the first is that of the Member who is old and has to retire. Nothing can be worse for democracy than that a Member hangs on to his position when he is no longer able to occupy it. Nothing is worse for a political party in a constituency or for the electors in a constituency than to have to say, "We will put up with our Member, although we know he is no longer capable of doing the job, because he has served us well for 20 years and we are not going to let him down now." That is very often what constituencies do say, and it is, from the democratic point of view, entirely wrong, and it is entirely wrong that this House should be so ungenerous to those who have so often contributed to the public weal.
Therefore, the only question with which we are concerned is what is the adequate sum for a pension for a Member who has retired. Surely the sum which the right hon. Gentleman has proposed is generally agreeable as a proper sum for a pension. How can that possibly be got out of any scheme of the Members' Pension Fund? So I hope that even if this proposal is not adopted in exactly the form in which it is proposed, the House will not abandon the idea of a pension for Members. It is entirely wrong that Members should die within the precincts of the House through


dragging themselves to duties which everybody knows they are no longer able to fulfil.
The right hon. Gentleman put forward various plans for expense accounts. I would say most seriously to him that there is a very grave danger that the Executive are taking on themselves to say what are the proper expenses for a Member to incur, to say how he should behave himself. He may employ a secretary or write a letter himself, but he may not incur expense on something else. To some extent the Inland Revenue Department already says this. One cannot, for example, as I found in an interesting case, claim Income Tax relief if one has to buy an Act of Parliament which is already out of date and which one cannot obtain from the Vote Office. I put one down in my expenses account to see what would happen. It was disallowed. Therefore, there are already, from the Inland Revenue point of view, all sorts of things that are absolutely necessary to Parliamentary life for which one is not entitled to charge.
Some Members may feel that their duties are best done if they visit continually their constituencies. That is a charge that the right hon. Gentleman thinks it is proper to allow. Other hon. Members, like myself, may feel rather ill-informed on industrial matters and that they ought to go to look at some factories. Is the expense of that to be an expense that the right hon. Gentleman will not allow? Suppose he himself has to go abroad. He may have an engagement in his constituency, and so he says to a colleague, "Fulfil it for me and spend the week-end speaking in my constituency." Will his colleague be allowed to charge that to his expense account or will the expenses be limited only for those Members who can afford voluntarily to go to their own areas? The Chancellor and I both know the chances of elections in Essex.
This is a larger problem, and we should not look at it in this detailed way. Many political parties live and have their being through propaganda and through discussion, and that is the only way in which democracy can work. Many hon. Members on this side of the House, and I am sure many hon. Members opposite, go to speak in areas which are hopeless from their own electoral point of view,

They may go to start a local political party somewhere. Those are occasions on which an hon. Member cannot say, in claiming expenses, "Four or five people came to see me. That is a very good meeting for a start. We have never had more than two before. My expenses for going to the meeting were £7 18s. 4d." Those are expenses which fall naturally on hon. Members and which cannot be charged against Income Tax, but the political life of this country would be much poorer if hon. Members did not indulge in those activities.
There are some hon. Members, like my right hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Bevan), who are more in demand outside their constituencies than are other hon. Members, and they may very properly, from a general political point of view, undertake a tour of the country. What is said to them? What if they cannot charge, whereas the man who goes and lives in his constituency can clock up £2 a night?
Those are a few examples. The Chancellor was fair to the House, and we all thank him for putting his ideas before us, but we have had only a few moments in which to consider them. The right hon. Gentleman says that London Members have not the same expenses as other Members, but half the expenses of a Member of Parliament are not of the sort which can be put down for Income Tax purposes, nor are they susceptible or understandable to the people in the world at large.
There are some hon. Members, for example, who occasionally make very long speeches and keep the House sitting late hours. One never knows, but on some such occasion there may be a Division and the result could be fatal to the position of the Government. Are the Government to fall or not according to how many Members can afford the taxi fare home? I live within a reasonable distance and it costs me about 4s. by taxi to go home. In a case of that sort, does one go to the Fees Office and say, "I was staying to speak on something or other and had to take a taxi home"? Or will that expense not be allowed?
This whole business of turning the Fees Office into a kind of arbiter of the conduct of Members of Parliament in the fulfilment of their duties is not only unworkable but is most undignified.

Mr. Mellish: Would not my hon. and learned Friend agree that if the Fees Office are responsible for the payment of hotel expenses, they could be called in divorce proceedings?

Mr. Bing: This has been a useful debate, because if there is any question misunderstood in the country, or which appears to be misunderstood, it is the question of Members' expense allowances. We must remember that whatever we do will result in a change. If we decide to do nothing, then we decide to alter the composition of Parliament. if we decide to do nothing, a great many hon. Members on both sides of the House will find it impossible to continue in Parliament. We shall have altered, perhaps for good, the whole conception of the nature of the British Parliament.
The British Parliament originally—and this is perhaps the reason for the difference between the rates of salaries paid in the Dominion Parliaments and the British Parliament—was a club. The Dominion Parliaments were always places where people worked seriously at the job of governing the country. For that reason they approached things from a different basis.
If we now decide not to make a change, we shall change the whole nature of Parliament in this country. It will not be possible to get people to come forward, and we may have a situation in which the trade unions will feel more obliged to provide support for their Members—and I do not think that is a good thing.
We shall have a situation in which everyone who comes into the House will have to decide whether he will have to accept some other job which is only offered to him because he is a Member of Parliament. It is all very well for Members to discuss the possibility of altering Parliamentary procedure, but the pressure on Members does not come only from Parliamentary procedure, it comes because they have resting on their shoulders far greater responsibility than ever rested on the shoulders of Members of Parliament before. If this House is to carry out its duties it can do so only if Members have at least the money to write to their constituents, at least the stamp with which to reply to a letter from somebody who is not a constituent, and at least the opportunity of seeing the country which they represent.

9.36 p.m.

Sir Wavell Wakefield: The hon. and learned Member for Hornchurch (Mr. Bing) has been somewhat critical of the situation put forward by the Chancellor, as, indeed, was the right hon. Member for Ipswich (Mr. Stokes) earlier on. The right hon. Member told us that he had written down certain observations at the time the Chancellor was making his suggestions, and the words he put down were certainly rather harsh. At the time that the right hon. Member for Ipswich was writing down his words, I was writing down mine. I wrote as follows: "Logical, sensible, something that the public can understand."
May I take the last first—something the public can understand. I think that is a point in which I am in agreement with the right hon. Member for Ipswich and the hon. and learned Member for Hornchurch, because I do not think that the public really understand how Members of Parliament are remunerated. I know that at the time when the Report on Members' remuneration and expenses was published there were leading articles in the newspapers and people writing to the "Financial Times" or the "Sunday Times," and the impression I got, many of my constituents got and the general public got was that a Member of Parliament took £1,000 a year remuneration or salary.
There was no idea that from that salary a large amount of expenses fell to be deducted. It is not understood generally in the country that one-quarter of the Members of Parliament do not receive any net salary at all because their expenditure is in excess of their net salary, as the Select Committee has shown. Indeed, the statistical results of the investigation carried out by the Committee showed that the net salary received by a Member of Parliament was in the order of £250 a year and not £1,000. I think that that is the first really important piece of education which should be given to the public.
I believe that the Chancellor, in putting forward his suggestions, has made a most important departure in principle from what has happened before. Always before a Member of Parliament has been considered in terms of whether he has an allowance, a fee or a salary of so


much, and expenses must be taken out of that fee, salary or allowance.
The suggestion of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if I understand it aright, is that Members should in future be paid a salary or remuneration for the work they do, whatever that may be. Obviously, there are differences of opinion as to the kind of salary that ought to be paid to a Member of Parliament for the duties that he fulfils. But, over and above that, my right hon. Friend has suggested that there should be a reimbursement of expenses.
I cannot understand why that should not be regarded as a sensible, logical suggestion. It is what already happens to millions of our fellow citizens. A man in a factory makes something and then is required to assemble it in another part of the country. In addition to his rates of pay, he is reimbursed his travelling expenses to the places where he has to put the job together and he gets a form of allowance, either subsistence allowance or reimbursement; the allowances vary in different ways. It is the same in the Civil Service and in the Fighting Forces. It is the same throughout industry and, generally speaking, that is the sort of principle that is adopted throughout the country—payment for a job of work, reimbursement of expenses. For many years I have wondered why Members of Parliament should be treated differently and not receive remuneration and reimbursement for expenses on the same basis as everybody else.
The hon. and learned Member for Hornchurch drew attention to some of the difficulties that would be created if the suggestions of the Chancellor of the Exchequer were put into effect. The hon. and learned Member said that they were unworkable and undignified. But the kind of details and facts which he put forward in argument are happening in their tens of thousands every day with inspectors of taxes by people who claim expenses. The expenses may have been permitted by the firms employing those who claim them, but either the firms or the individuals themselves must justify them to the inspectors of taxes as being expenses properly incurred in the discharge of their duties.

Mr. Houghton: We are doing exactly the same. There is no difference between

what we are doing for the Inland Revenue and what everybody else is doing. That is no comparison.

Sir W. Wakefield: Precisely. The hon. Member says that we are doing the same. I do not understand, therefore, why the point should be made from the benches opposite that my right hon. Friend's proposals are unworkable and undignified.

Mr. Bing: Suppose that the hon. Member is on, say, the national executive of an association such as the United Nations Union, or something of that sort. If there is a meeting of that body, would the hon. Member feel that it was a proper expense that ought to be paid by him as a Member of Parliament? Is that the sort of thing for which he should draw reimbursement from the Fees Office?

Mr. Scholefield Allen: Suppose that the hon. Member happens to be a recorder who is interested in prisons and visits a prison in the north of England or in Scotland. Does the hon. Member suggest that he would be entitled to be given his railway fare and hotel expenses?

Sir W. Wakefield: Those are all the kind of matters which would have to be discussed and for which, no doubt, precedents would be established. Obviously, some of the suggestions to be put forward would be try-ons and would not be allowed, but no doubt others, by discussion and agreement—there is machinery for the purpose—would become recognised and allowed. At present there are certain allowable expenses which we claim, secretarial, postage, travelling within a constituency, and so on. I do not see why the kind of reimbursement suggested by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, which is what we are doing now, is either unworkable or undignified.
I do not think that the Select Committee's proposal to increase a Member's salary to £1,500 can be considered to be satisfactory. The proposal of my right hon. Friend is more satisfactory, because expenses in a constituency vary from year to year. That being so, why should the net salary of a Member of Parliament vary from year to year? The expenses of individual constituencies vary enormously. One of my hon. Friends earlier


spoke of incurring something like £600 in travelling around a large agricultural constituency. In travelling within my compact constituency of St. Marylebone, I incur perhaps only a quarter of that expenditure.
I fail to see why, because various Members have different requirements in their constituents and different duties to discharge, if the costs to one Member in discharging certain duties are five or six times greater than to another Member, they should all come off the same net salary.

Mr. William Shepherd: Is it suggested that expenses of Members, irrespective of the amount, shall be allowed by the Inland Revenue? If an hon. Member stays at the Savoy Hotel, for instance, and incurs expenses of £3,000 a year, would the hon. Member agree that those expenses should be allowed?

Sir W. Wakefield: That has not been suggested at all. There must be limits to the reimbursement of expenses. If a Member of Parliament travels within his constituency, there will be a certain mileage which is agreed and he will be reimbursed on that basis.

Mr. Jack Jones: The hon. Member has been extremely fair in giving way, and we appreciate it. What happens in the case of this description? Certain hon. Members will be travelling to the North tonight and their sleeper accommodation will be paid for by the taxpayer. I can go to my flat tonight and stay there for some time, catching the 1.20 train to the North. Is it the suggestion by the Chancellor of the Exchequer that the taxpayer should pay for my sleeper and my train fare plus the two guineas expenses for being in London the same night? That is the sort of exploitation which could take place.

Sir W. Wakefield: The hon. Gentleman says that is the sort of exploitation which takes place.

Mr. Jones: I said "could take place."

Sir W. Wakefield: I agree, but certain adjustments will have to be made. What I am suggesting is that any inequalities of the proposed system are smaller than the inequalities existing at the present time. I think the suggestion made by

my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer is an excellent one. Expenses will be allowed to enable a Member of Parliament to carry out his duties in his constituency, and while there will be reimbursements of expenses of that kind, there must be certain limits and standards laid down which are not necessary at the moment because the maximum a Member of Parliament can claim now is the extent of his salary of £1,000 a year. I commend to the House the suggestion thrown out by the Chancellor of the Exchequer as something worthy of consideration when the whole of this matter comes under review.
I should like to conclude by saying that the Committee has made out a case for something to be done to improve the position of Members of Parliament. That is admitted on all sides of the House, and I do not want to weary the House by repeating arguments in that connection. All I want to add is that if agreement is reached for something to be done, whether on the lines suggested by my right hon. Friend or in some other way, then the decision should be made in this Parliament but should not be brought into effect until the next Parliament. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why?"] There will then be no question of electioneering or of a General Election, but it will be known that this step has been taken in this Parliament and the Members who are elected to the next Parliament will know the exact conditions under which they enter Parliament.

Mr. Lewis: We all know that the hon. Member is one of the finest employers in engineering in the country and that he deals handsomely with the trade unions. Is he suggesting that if his trade union employees present a case to him for increased wages which he accepts that he would say to them, "I agree with everything you say, but I cannot bring it into operation until some time in the future because it will be more opportune then"?

Sir W. Wakefield: The point put forward by the hon. Member is not comparable with the position of Members of Parliament. We were elected to the House on certain terms and conditions. When we were returned here we all knew the terms and conditions of our election and the electorate knew them. Therefore, for the reasons so ably given by


speakers on both sides of the House, I think that we should implement this suggestion in the next Parliament.
I agree with other speakers that Under-Secretaries should be dealt with generously immediately—[HON. MEMBERS: "Why?"]—and that they should receive in addition to their Parliamentary salary and expenses a salary for their Ministerial duties.

9.51 p.m.

Mr. J. McGovern (Glasgow, Shettleston): I have listened to most of this debate and have been glad to hear the general agreement that something must be done in relation to the expenses and salaries of Members of Parliament. The hon. Member for St. Marylebone (Sir W. Wakefield) began by saying that his constituents did not understand how the remuneration of Members was allocated, but I am sure they will have greater difficulty in following the explanation of the hon. Gentleman of how expenses can be determined under the allowance proposed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
If anything has come out of this debate, it is that there should be a straight increase in salary of £500, because any subterfuge that is attempted means that we shall be creating more inequalities and injustices than would occur by a straight increase. We have been told time and again that a straight increase of £500 would go to people who did not require it. But surely the Chancellor would give with the one hand and take back with the other, because tax would be deducted in the ordinary way, and the right hon. Gentleman would get at least half of what was allocated to hon. Members from those who did not require it.
I came to this House 24 years ago and I have not run around urging increases in salary because, during the earlier part of my life, I lived on a modest income. When I was in the I.L.P. group, we lived on a very small wage. I remember some of my experiences in looking for a cheap room. Once I had a room in Westminster behind the Abbey. I remember waking up one morning at 6.30. There was a faulty gas tap in the room and I was almost gassed, but I managed to get to the window and fling it up.
Then I went to another part of London in search of a cheap room, because

I had to maintain a growing family in Glasgow. This one was in a small hotel. I awakened at 3 o'clock in the morning and found that the bed in which I was sleeping was full of bugs. I had to get up and strip myself. I rang the bell but could not get any response, so I left a note in the room with eight dead bugs on top of it, left the hotel in the night, and went in search of another in which to sleep.
So I think that a Member of Parliament living away from home is entitled to a good, comfortable room in an hotel. Later on, I went to one which could not be called a classy hotel, although I would put it down as one of the best in London. It was the Cumberland. Before the war bed and breakfast there cost 9s. 6d.; today it costs 35s. If I stay there for three nights now, and have wireless in my room and incur various expenses, tips and so forth, I cannot spend less than £6. Then I have my food to find and the ordinary expenses of transport, and so forth.
I do not smoke or drink, and as a result my requirements are very modest, but it costs me £10 per week when the House is sitting. After my expenses have been paid, and I allocate some money to the divisional party, I have about £6 15s. or £7 to give to my wife, and that also has to help to keep me in out-of-pocket expenses at home, in going to the pictures and so on.
Surely, it is not intended that Members of Parliament should have to come to the House as if to an evangelical meeting to give testimony in order to convince the Government that there is a case for them. I had other resources for a time, though I have not got them now, and I am having to nibble slowly at the money that I put away. It is taking more than my modest income to keep me at present, and many other hon. Members are in the same position.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer did not put forward any proposals but analysed various proposals that could be made. One related to a £2 allowance. I visited Australia 18 months ago and I lived for a week in Canberra. To understand the Australian system in the Federal Parliament one has to understand the way in which the town of Canberra is constructed. There is no real living accommodation in Canberra and therefore some of the Members of


the Senate and of the Federal Parliament, embracing all the six states, live in hotels or in Government hostels or bungalows and pay 9s. 6d. a night for bed and breakfast. A Member of the Federal Parliament receives £1,750 a year and in addition has £400 to £900 a year, according to the size of the division, to maintain his division. On top of that, he has £2 10s. every day that Parliament sits to pay for his 9s. 6d. bed and breakfast and to feed himself during the day. Those are the arrangements in a small part of the world which has only a few million population.
Here in this Parliament we spend £1,750 million a year on rearmament in order, if necessary, to maintain British democracy. We think that it is a great thing and ought to be defended. I agree with that, but part of the defence of democracy is to see that those who are Members of a democratic House have the opportunity to live in a decent manner and to do the job with which Parliament entrusts them. I urge the Chancellor, therefore, to consider this as an issue of a straight increase of £500.
I repeat the view that I have taken all along that there should have been a contributory pensions scheme with each Member paying £5 a month. I believe that a grand case has been made out for a scheme. I have never been afraid in this House or on the platforms in the country to defend any claims that I would make myself. I do not believe that it is my duty to come here to defend every civil servant, every judge and every person in the country who wants an increase in pay and then to be ashamed to press my own claim when the time arrives.
Unfortunately, we have to decide. It would have been better if an outside body had been asked to decide, but since the duty devolves upon us we should take our courage in our hands and decide this issue. The British public are more generous than some small-minded people in this country believe. Those who criticise and attack are the type of people who are always out to attack every section of the community who receive increases, and there has been envy and jealousy. I appeal to the Chancellor to support this plea.
It being Ten o'Clock, the Motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

BY-PASS ROAD, CARDIFF

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House now adjourn."—[Mr. Kaberry].

10.0 p.m.

Mr. George Thomas: I hope to bring the attention of the House to what appears at first sight to be a local problem. It certainly is a South Wales problem. In the nine years that it has been my privilege to represent part of the City of Cardiff in this House, it has not been often that I have sought through the Adjournment to raise specific constituency matters. But both my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) and the hon. Member for Cardiff, North (Mr. Llewellyn), I know, were equally desirous in seeking the Adjournment on the question of a by-pass road for the City of Cardiff.
The City of Cardiff is a beautiful city; it is a progressive city. It has much to be said in its favour. Unfortunately, it is not governed by a Labour majority, unless the votes being counted at the moment prove to be sufficiently enlightened. Even so, it is a progressive city of which all of us who live within its boundaries are indeed proud. The City of Cardiff is concerned about its traffic problems and the corporation, through its town clerk, has approached the three Cardiff Members of Parliament and sought our support in connection with the beginning of the eastern by-pass for the city. The city serves as a venue for the people of the valleys of South Wales. It is very often the scene of great international football matches. It is the scene of great demonstrations of all sorts and on Thursdays and Saturdays the city is especially crowded when our friends and relatives come in from the valleys.
I am a valley boy and I know how the people of the valleys look on a trip to Cardiff as a special day out. But it is 'becoming intolerable to be in the city when it is crowded. One can almost walk across the tops of the motor cars to reach the other side of the road. I do not want to be guilty of exaggeration, but I do know that the problem is getting similar to the problem in London. When there are great events in London, we know how traffic congestion in one


part affects several other parts, and in Cardiff we frequently find that state of affairs. My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South-East and the hon. Member for Cardiff, North will testify to that.
The problem has become one of the major problems for the city and the watch committee has not been unmindful of it. The chief constable advised the corporation that we ought to develop a one-way system of traffic which would mean a great loss to our shops in various parts of the city. After a tremendous campaign, the one-way system for Queen Street was withdrawn. Every responsible person is now agreed that we need the eastern by-pass, which would relieve the city of the heavy industrial traffic from London, the Midlands and the Bristol area, moving to West Wales.
There has been an astonishing increase in traffic flowing through the main streets of Cardiff since 1945. The increase from 1945 to 1951 was no less than 50 per cent, of the traffic passing through Queen Street, Duke Street, Castle Street and on to Cowbridge Road. The traffic which is pouring through the streets of Cardiff means that there is a general slowing down in the activities of our area. Before the war we established the Western Avenue which has been a godsend in relieving the city centre. This proposed eastern by-pass will extend from the Western Avenue to the North Road Junction for five and a half miles in an easterly direction joining the main London—Newport Road at St. Mellons. It would be a blessing to Cardiff.
Like the roads in other cities of this country, our roads in Cardiff were not constructed for the heavy industrial traffic which they have to carry today. Cardiff is not an ancient city. We have ancient monuments but the city is, roughly, only 100 years old. Our leases are now beginning to run out, but that is a matter of industrial development, and I do not wish to get involved in that provocative subject tonight. Although Cardiff is not an ancient city, the roads are not wide enough for the heavy burden imposed upon them at present. We have, I think, a right to ask the Ministry of Transport to help us to face this problem. I know that the cost of the new road would be borne by the Ministry.
Cowbridge Road which runs through the heart of Cardiff West, and runs through my constituency, was last year the scene of fatal accident after fatal accident. I myself visited three homes where children had been killed within a short period of time. It is a death-trap for the people who live there. The suggested arterial road would be a means not only of easing the temper of motorists and easing the problem of transport, but it would also be a means of saving life within the city.
I hope that the Minister will not say, "Yes, we all agree with you, but we have not the money." This is one of those projects for which we must find the money and where it is too important to wait. I hope that if he succeeds in catching your eye, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South-East will support this request which comes from the city fathers.

10.9 p.m.

Mr. James Callaghan: I wish to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas) on his zeal and initiative. Only he and I know how far he has travelled today.

Mr. G. Thomas: I cast my vote.

Mr. Callaghan: I will not go into details of his journey, but he has travelled hundreds of miles to be here this evening to put the case for a road which would run through his constituency and which affects us all in Cardiff.
I wish to support the case made originally by the council to the Lloyd Committee. I know from my personal knowledge that conditions, are becoming quite intolerable in the city centre. Whatever plans the Ministry may have for relieving traffic on either side of the city, they will be of little avail if all the traffic passing through the city is so slowed down that time is lost which has otherwise been gained. All of us who know the city and who have been there on week-days, and indeed at week-ends, know that this is a most serious problem.
I know as well as anybody does the difficulties of the Ministry of Transport in this matter but I tell the Minister that there is a real case to be met here, and I hope that he will give us some indication of the degree of urgency that he


attaches to the scheme and when he hopes it will be undertaken. Again, I congratulate my hon. Friend upon his initiative in securing this Adjournment debate.

10.11 p.m.

The Joint Parliamentary-Secretary to the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation (Mr. Hugh Molson): I know that the traffic problems of Cardiff have been worrying all three hon. Members who represent that city. It was my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, North (Mr. Llewellyn) who asked us a question about the matter only a short time ago. However, I recognise that there is no difference of opinion at all between the parties as to the importance of something being done to relieve the traffic congestion in Cardiff.
We are most anxious as soon as possible to begin work upon the Eastern Avenue. As the hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas) has said, Western Avenue has already been completed, and it is already serving a useful purpose. Obviously the value of what has already been done would be very much increased if it were possible to complete the road which would provide a by-pass around the busy, important and beautiful city of Cardiff, so that the heavy industrial traffic between the industrial towns of the South of Wales could by-pass it.
My Department has been in close touch with the city council and has been employing the surveyors of the city council as its agents to carry out the necessary preliminary survey for this work. It is my right hon. Friend's intention, as soon as the details have been carried far enough, to proceed with the making of a trunk road order.
That is a straightforward answer to the point raised by the hon. Member for Cardiff, West and the hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) as to whether or not the Minister recognises the importance of the scheme. We are prepared to undertake it as soon as funds permit. Because it is so largely concerned with the heavy industrial traffic of South Wales, and, indeed, of the country as a whole, and not primarily that of the inhabitants and ratepayers of Cardiff, we are prepared to go a long way in making this road, Western Avenue and also that part of the Cowbridge Road to which the hon. Member for Cardiff, West referred, a trunk road. It is difficult

to describe, but I refer to the part of Cowbridge Road to which the hon. Member referred. The whole of the cost of building the new road and the cost of maintenance of the existing part will be borne by the Exchequer.
I hope, therefore, that the two hon. Gentlemen opposite and also my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, North will regard that as being, as far as it goes, a satisfactory answer, and will realise that we recognise the importance of the matter and that in due course it will be undertaken, and undertaken at the cost of the Exchequer.

Mr. Callaghan: That is a beginning.

Mr. Molson: Yes, it is a beginning.
The hon. Gentleman no doubt realises that I am now coming to the question of the time-table, and that is where I fear I may not be able entirely to satisfy the two hon. Gentlemen who have spoken. On a number of occasions, we have been asked in this House to make certain that the Principality of Wales obtains fair treatment, and that case has been put by the right hon. Gentleman the Father of the House and by hon. Gentlemen representing Welsh constituencies who sit on both sides. The Government have recognised both the strength and the justification for this nationalist sentiment, and it was as a result of that that the Lloyd Committee—

Mr. Callaghan: Would the hon. Gentleman substitute the word "national "for "nationalist?"

Mr. Molson: I really do not want to split hairs, and I think that perhaps the word I used is, on the whole, more appropriate in the circumstances.

Mr. Callaghan: No.

Mr. Molson: The Lloyd Committee went into the whole question of what could and should be done in order to help the Principality of Wales. We have always recognised since before the war that, owing to causes for which Wales was in no way responsible, it has suffered from particular misfortunes. The great industrial development which took place there was succeeded by a period of depression, and, for that reason, it appeared to be justifiable to treat Wales, and especially South Wales, in a special way in order to try to reduce the amount


of unemployment that exists at the present time, and certainly to prevent the recurrence of the very heavy unemployment which existed there between the wars.
It was for that reason that the Government considered that they were justified in undertaking the very large road developments in Wales and in the adjoining part of England which was announced by my right hon. Friend on 8th December last. Hon. Gentlemen representing Welsh constituencies will be aware that there are some colleagues of mine representing English constituencies who thought that there had been discrimination in favour of Wales. If that were so, I think it could be justified for the reasons I have given—because of the vital need of trying to encourage new industries to establish themselves in those parts of South Wales where the mining industry, in particular, the tinplate industry and others of the early and pioneering industries of the whole country, upon which our prosperity had depended in the past, are now in a state of decline. It was for that reason that the very large programme was approved by the Government.
Let me begin by dealing with a road scheme in the immediate vicinity of Cardiff. The Whitchurch by-pass was recently approved, and will be included in the first three years programme, and will cost £250,000. It is not actually within the city boundaries of Cardiff, but in that developed area, and it will confer very great benefit on the city of Cardiff. Then, there is the Neath—Llanelly road, already approved at a cost of nearly £1 million. There is the Swansea Eastern Approach, to which the Government grant will amount to well over £250,000. There is the Neath by-pass, Part II, which will cost £1.6 million, and there is the Port Talbot by-pass, to cost £2 million. These schemes amount to almost £4 million of Exchequer money.
In addition to that is the route along the heads of the valleys. The hon. Gentleman described himself as "a son of the valleys." He will realise how important it is for people living in the northern and uppermost parts of the valleys that there should be road com

munication to make industrial development reasonably possible. The cost of the improvements of the Hirwain—Abergavenny route will be approximately £4 million. It is proposed to construct part of the Newport by-pass at a cost of £1½ million, in order to enable traffic from the South Wales ports to get on to road A449 to Raglan, which it is thought will be of considerable benefit to the whole of that part of Wales.
Then there is the Ross Spur and by-pass, providing a new route on that industrial area of South Wales to the great industrial area around Birmingham, which will cost a very large sum in the neighbourhood of £5½ million. Although part of it may be outside the Principality, it is being undertaken in the interests not solely of that part of England but in the interests of industrial South Wales. It is therefore incontrovertibly the case that in the new programme that was announced very large works are being undertaken for the benefit of Wales in general and of South Wales in particular.
We are subject to pressure, but I think reasonable pressure, from the representatives of many industrial areas in England who are asking that urgent and long overdue work of road development should be carried out. I hope that with that spirit of reasonableness and moderation which always distinguishes the hon. Member for Cardiff, West he will recognise that in this first announced programme of road construction we are doing a great deal for South Wales. We have done a great deal for Cardiff. With the assurance that we fully recognise the importance of this by-pass, I hope that the hon. Member will not press us to undertake it out of the general order of priority.

Mr. G. Thomas: I hope that the Minister will understand that neither my hon. Friend nor myself committed ourselves to the exact route suggested for these roads. We are very appreciative of the manner in which the Minister has given his reply.

Question put, and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at Twenty-four Minutes past Ten o'Clock.